dig.ni.fy Summer 2024 | Page 106

His Work

As stated on the U.S. pavilion website (https://www.jeffreygibsonvenice2024.org/), Gibson’s work involves a “interdisciplinary practice and hybrid visual language characterized by a bold use of color, pattern, and text that combines American, Indigenous, and Queer histories with references to popular subcultures, literature, and global aesthetic and artistic traditions … [h]is practice deconstructs the ways in which notions of taste, authenticity, and persistent stereotypes of Indigenous people are used to delegitimize cultural expressions that exist outside the mainstream.”

Gibson works include paintings, sculpture, flags, and video. In many works, Gibson incorporates Native American beadwork, trading post blankets, metal studs, fringe, jingles, among other materials. In others, he uses oil paint and spray paint in works to create neon-colored abstracts. Words and sayings, built through his own form of graffiti, find themselves on paintings and sculpture.

Influences

Gibson’s influences are wide ranging. He acknowledges a deep respect for his Native/Indigenous heritage, and for the people who supported him (his chief always encouraged his interest in art and his graduate education was sponsored by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians). But Gibson also credits what he calls his “nomadic” lifestyle – born from living in large urban areas in America, Korea, and Germany – with being a major influence. And then, there is his experience being a ‘queer Native male born toward the end of the 20th century and entering the 21st century.’

Collectively, this background and these experiences made Gibson acutely aware of ‘varying aesthetics of each place’ as well as ‘specific cultural aesthetics, language barriers, cultural barriers, etcetera.’  And the cultural practices cited as important influencers include pow-wows, night clubs, and raves – as well as the regalia and fashion that accompany such. It is also in this context that Gibson’s expansive understanding of Native / Indigenous art and ritual become understandable. He has noted, for example, that it is important to realize that the beads used by native peoples in their beadwork came from around the world through trade. It makes sense such international sensibilities would find their way back to Venice, as the city itself has always been home to so many foreigners.

For more details about Jeffrey Gibson and the influences which made him who he is, please listen to this excellent 46-minute podcast, “The Art Angle,” sponsored by Artnet, on Apple Podcasts, entitled “How Jeffrey Gibson Went from Almost Quitting Art to the Venice Biennale”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-jeffrey-gibson-went-from-almost-quitting-art-to/id1484445852?i=1000654363159

Awards

Gibson’s website lists many distinguished awards, including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2012), and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award (2019). His work is included in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada; Portland Art Museum; Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Gibson conceived and coedited An Indigenous Present (2023), a book which showcases diverse approaches to Indigenous concepts, forms, and media.

Conclusion

Gibson has said “I don’t make work to please people; but I do make work to communicate with people." Building on all facets of his life experience, and the people and places and aesthetics that have influenced him, Gibson has, with his solo exhibition in the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, certainly found 'the

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