Jacob Parks
Jacob Parks was an artist who conveyed the cultural and traditional resilience of the Lenape through his paintings. Parks, a Native American artist incorporates pieces that deeply reflect the impact of European colonization on Native American identity and culture. He focuses particularly on the Lenape people. Through his art, Parks captures moments of resilience of assimilation, as well as native Americans' work to navigate it. Each drawing provides a personal narrative that bridges historical memory with cultural pride, and challenges misconceptions about Native American life and traditions.
Parks’s art pieces convey the impact that assimilation had on native americans and the work to not lose themselves within it. Parks’s piece called "Outside the Xinkwikaon"(Lenape Names of House Part) which conveys staying rooted in costumes prominent in a time where conversion to Christianity was a major theme force upon native Americans. The word Xinkwikaon means church, but instead of changing what they call church Parks keeps it.
Through his works, Parks illustrates not only the impact of assimilation but also the unwavering dedication to the cultural continuum. In Parks’s art, he shows the Lenape’s efforts to hold onto their heritage, and a testament to resilience. His pieces are not just historical reflections but narratives of Native American identity. This is why I chose Parks as one of my exhibit artists. Having a range of his drawings in museums his artwork not only reflects the time but also shows current views of how that time treated native Americans and what it meant to live in that moment.