Erica Lord

• 2010, Dry Ice, Museum of Contemporary Native American Art, Santa Fe, NM[4]
• 2009, BadLand, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM:[5] An installation of prayer bundles made from the red cloth of the United States' Star Spangled Banner.[6]
• 2007, Off the Map: Landscape and the Native Imagination, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY[7]

Erica Lord photographs two tattoos: one on the inner side of her left forearm titled “Enrollment number” and one on her right forearm titled “Blood Quantum”.[8] These two tattoos criticize the Native American image created by modern society. [9] Lord’s tattoo titled “Blood Quantum”, after the blood quantum laws, is a visual criticism on the United States government control on all Native American heritage. [10] The tattoo “Enrollment Number” is the number given to Erica Lord, and all Native Americans, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. [11] Placing this number on her arm, Erica Lord draws direct comparison to Holocaust survivors and their experiences to the United States expansion and relocation of Native Americans. [12]

Common Native Art typically showcases Indian land and where they come from. However, this specific image has little to do with land because the photo has a black backdrop and the shot is from her waist up, focusing solely on her body. She boldly refers to this tanning ritual as white beautification: tanning or browning of the skin. Using such words is a very straight forward way to a political call to action. The words I Tan to Look More Native are scripted onto her back with sunscreen to show the contrast effect after tanning. The inscription is to challenge Native identity through the contrast being used, which to viewers start to become unrecognizable. It challenges what an "Indian" really looks like and what people thought they looked like. She uses her own body to show her struggles through becoming an emigrant. She is photographed nude with her back facing the camera in an erotic pin-up pose. She poses this way to give a duplicitous meaning to the word pose to expose those who have unrealistic expectations of what a Native person is supposed to look like.[13]

On April 3, 2008 Erica Lord arrived at the George Gustav Heye Center, the National Museum of the American Indian, at the Smithsonian Museum in New York, for a performance/installation titled Artifact Piece, Revisited. This piece was a reenactment of American artist James Luna's Artifact Piece, that he first performed at the San Diego Museum of Man in 1987. When Lord entered the gallery, she lay down in a case, closed her eyes, and allowed museum visitors to examine her over the next few hours. Captions placed throughout the display identified parts of her, such as her painted toenails. There were two glass cases on either side of the box where Lord laid, that contained clothing and her personal possessions. One side contained Alaskan Native dress, and the other contained modern clothing. This first performance of Artifact Piece, Revisited was followed by lectures and a discussion with Lord herself. The artist returned to the museum to perform the piece again twice over the next two days. Using her body as a conversation piece, Lord critiqued the displaying of Native people in museum exhibits and the display of women's bodies.