Shane Charles: Into the Sun (2025)

Shane Charles (United States (Penobscot and British descent), born 1983), Into the Sun, 2025, single-channel video projection. Courtesy of the artist

Shane Charles’ installation practice intersects performance and mixed-media work, all within a cartographic and archaeological framework. Born in Bangor, Maine, and raised across the Penobscot River between Old Town and the Penobscot Nation, Charles comes from a family with deep ties to Olamon. His father, a Penobscot Nation citizen and lifelong surveyor, passed on a lineage that informs Charles’ understanding of cartography, time and site. His work engages generational themes of inheritance, materiality, and representation. 

Triple suns blaze across the central projection in this exhibition, hovering above towering trees and glinting grass in an iterative, projected color field. These are recurring images taken on Matinicus Isle, where European settlement radically transformed the landscape. Natural tall grasses were razed for farmland, enabling the spread of tree seed across the island. The blood-red tint unites these photographs, evoking the legacy of agricultural burning, while the dawn’s powerful force emblazons the trace of altered history. Dawnland peoples continue their stewardship of these lands and waters today, from the Penobscot River, down through Penobscot Bay, and out into the Gulf of Maine. 

A raw bronze moon further illustrates the diurnal/nocturnal order that defines this open coastal zone. Joining this sculpture is a canvas-collage work, Poppy, which incorporates Presumpscot formation clay, a glacial-marine deposit found in midden sites across this region. For Charles, this material marks Penobscot territory, which stretches from inland forests to the coast, bridging riverine and oceanic ecologies.  

This is a new work presented by the Portland Museum of Art and Shane Charles from a foundational project, Waiting for the Sun to Rise, which was commissioned by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation with support from the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine.