I am lucky enough to live close to one of my favorite museums in the whole world: the National Museum of the American Indian, so I go there a lot. Their most recent electrifying exhibition is that of TC Cannon, an Oklahoma-born Native American artist, poet and musician, who left a rich and very current heritage, despite dying at the age of 32 in 1978. At the center of his work was the struggle of belonging to both his home tribes, and the American state. This became especially poignant when Cannon was deployed to serve and protect US interests in Vietnam, while constantly struggling with the dichotomy of his origins. Evocative of Van Gogh but deeply original, a brave study of personhood, the American mythos and otherness, Cannon’s work is definitely to be seen, either in person at the museum, or simply online.

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