Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) claimed to have been rescued from a plane crash in Crimea during World War II by Tatars. In the artist’s much-mythologized version of this event, a sympathetic group of nomads pulled him from the wreckage, treated his wounds with animal fat, and wrapped him up in felt. This prompted a lifelong fascination with the potential of Indigenous healing practices, shamanistic rituals, and folk knowledge to heal contemporary social ills.
I Like America and America Likes Me documents an iconic 1974 performance in New York. Having travelled directly by ambulance from the airport, Beuys spent three days at René Block Gallery in the exclusive company of a coyote, before returning to the airport by the same ambulance (thus never setting foot on the country’s soil). By living for this period with a symbol of the spirit world, untamed nature, and pre-colonial America, Beuys expressed solidarity with Indigenous communities and proposed ritual as a means of reconnecting to the other species with whom our planet is shared.
