Description
In Last Girl (Lake), Jeremy Dennis blends horror film tropes with the enduring fear of Native presence in the American psyche. A woman, breathless and alert, has just pushed off in a canoe, narrowly “escaping” a Native figure who stands motionless at the water’s edge. Drawing from the classic “final girl” trope — the lone survivor of a horror movie who evades a faceless, often supernatural threat — Dennis replaces the monster with a calm, unthreatening Indigenous person, flipping fear into farce.
By merging pop culture with historical anxiety, Dennis reveals how deeply the fear of Native people is embedded in settler imagination — not as active threats, but as specters of guilt, history, and unacknowledged presence. The Native figure doesn’t chase; he simply is, watching as the fantasy of escape plays out. Last Girl (Lake) critiques how American culture often treats the acknowledgment of Native survival as something terrifying or disruptive, parodying the impulse to flee rather than confront. In doing so, the image becomes both humorous and haunting, casting light on the stories we’ve inherited — and the ones we refuse to face.
Artwork:Last Girl (Lake), 2021
20 x 30 inches
Metal Print
