Jeffrey Gibson
Interveiw by Jan Garden Castro
Jeffrey Gibson is the first indigenous artist in charge of creating the 2024 U. S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In addition to being at the center of the art world’s biggest platform, he raised most of the 5.8 million budget in order to invite other indigenous artists to the opening and to the colloquium that takes place in October. His range of materials now includes bronze as he prepares for the Metropolitan Museum Facade commission in fall, 2025. In the meantime,this 2019 MacArthur “genius” recipient will launch a 20,000 square foot solo show at MASS MoCA this November which will offer seven stages for programs.
Jan Castro: How did the U. S. Pavilion’s monumental figures “The Enforcer” and “We want to be free,” the architecture, and the concept come together?
Jeffrey Gibson: I initially had a different proposal for Venice. Then in 2022, I went to look at the building, and I thought, this is not the right proposal—not the right space, not the right audience. I looked through the history of my work, and I thought, what are the moments when I’ve made something that resonated with people the way I wanted it to? The figures—I call them ancestral spirit figures—are, for me, about our shared space. I wanted them to be the sentinels, almost the first thing a visitor would encounter—two grand figures. Intuitively, my sense of scale has been determined by the space. There’s a certain architectural line where the ceiling curves a bit to go up into a skylight, and I knew they needed to break that line. That’s how the scale was determined.
Castro: Some of your art here quotes U. S. history documents. The U. S. Pavilion was built during the 1930 depression, during some indigenous relocations, and around the time when your grandparents were born. Does the building’s bold blood red color also signify historic massacres as well as ongoing new births?
Gibson: That’s not a conscious thought in my head. I hadn’t thought about it. I think the color red for indigenous people is a very powerful color, so it doesn’t not include that.
Castro: Is there a statement somewhere saying “Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Crisis”?
Gibson: Sarah Ortegon, who came and danced as part of the vernissage week, is the only performer in that 2019 video. She is doing a jingle dance in Times Square; she dedicated that performance to missing and murdered indigenous women. Viewers would not see that. The song she’s dancing to is “Sisters” by A Tribe Called Red. That is “behind the scenes” information but present in the narrative of the piece. It was on the Times Square screens for months during lockdown. I’m sure it has shown up in earlier writing about that piece.
Castro: My next questions go back to your studies [around age 20] at the Art Institute (‘92-‘95) as you also worked with indigenous elders as an intern at The Field Museum and learned about repatriating ethnographic objects. What was your art like then?
Gibson: I was studying painting, but it was a very confusing time. I was working at the Field Museum and learning about objects in the collection from indigenous people who knew what they were—as opposed to reading the notes in an accession book at the Museum were radically different experiences. It was also a time of identity politics after the onset of the AIDS crisis. Being a gay man, that was very present in my mind. Also, the culture wars of the 80s and censorship issues were happening in the arts at the time. I loved the formal qualities of painting; I loved color, but this idea of identity and politics in artmaking was a little suffocating for me. Having the experience at the Field Museum felt very real and often surreal; those conversations were so grand that they made making art pale if that makes sense.
Castro: Yes, it does. In 2005, for your breakthrough show at New York City’s American Indian Community House, Helene Cixous famously wrote that you know how to “undo and reunite” and “make the earth speak”…”in ribbons of colors…” Why was this a breakthrough show for you?
Gibson: As a young artist living in New York, my first show felt very special. I was aware of indigenous artists who had come before me. The Community House was a great space, and their archive of previous exhibitions was everyone who I had looked at. It felt like an honor. Of course, that was after years of thinking that the only place to have your first New York show was a Chelsea gallery. It was this fantastic acceptance that I had a community that I enjoyed and cared for and felt cared for by them.
Also, Kathleen Ash-Milby organized that exhibition, and now she’s the Co-Curator of the U.S. Pavilion in Venice. That relationship has been very important for me. She’s been a friend and also a confidante during all of these years.
Castro: You’re good at building great friendships. I love your 2015 work Your two grandfathers were both sharecroppers and Baptist ministers in their respective Choctaw and Cherokee languages. You’ve said you were closer to your grandmothers Annie Wilson and Lily Gibson and to Choctaw tribal chief Phillip Martin, who provided funds for your grad school in London. As you were growing up, what were some turning points in relation to learning about your heritages?
Gibson: Growing up as a city kid visiting families in Mississippi and Oklahoma, I was always accepted and embraced. As I got older, I wasn’t always accepted as a gay man. Also, my interests in art, music, and fashion were not reflected in either of those communities. So when my grandmothers passed, I lost a connection.
Then I recently went to Mississippi because the current [Choctaw] Chief, Cyrus Ben, came to Venice for the opening. Afterwards, they wanted to acquire a print and install it in the Heritage Center on the reservation. So I went, and they presented the print to the tribe, and it was wonderful. I feel like that was a turning point for me—getting to return to Mississippi as my full self. They reached out and requested the work that I make in the world. That relationship is important to me. We also shifted some money that I donate annually to arts materials funding for the school on the reservation. When I had initially approached Phillip Martin in 1994 about teaching art on the reservation, he wrote back to me that due to the economy they had just shut down all arts education in their school after deciding to focus on learning trade-based skills. That felt like a full circle, new beginning moment.
Castro: You have developed a community around your art practice in upstate New York in a repurposed schoolhouse, and you are also an artist in residence at Bard. What are some strategies for empowering yourself and others in these different kinds of communities? What inspires you?
Gibson: Being a child of the 80s—not an adult—it was an optimistic time creatively. There were new voices. I give a lot of credit to MTV in terms of being able to distribute music from all around the world in a way that made it cool. I was paying attention to what it was like to be creative in New York City specifically, and it excited me because I thought, that’s where I want to go. I want to be among people that make me feel normal—my creative thoughts are normalized.
One thing I would tell people is: build the world that you want to see. That’s one of the things that has guided me. In the 80s—as I saw it, the future was a positive, inclusive world. Everybody agreed we would work toward co-existing with civility and kindness toward each other.
That is the world I have built in my studio. Even people who question it—I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me: wow, you can feel it in here. People are happy, respected; people are getting along, working. It’s a lot of repetitive work; you have to be comfortable around other people. They’re young. It’s wonderful that it’s evolved to what it is. I don’t think I could have ever planned that we would arrive as far as where the studio is at today.
Castro: You married in 1998 in Norway, moved to New York in 1999, and you learned about your MacArthur Award in 2019 after a hard day and after taking your three-year-old daughter to her first day care day. What are some approaches you’ve developed for balancing being an in-demand artist, partner, and parent with two children?
Gibson: Living in New York City, I used to be one of the artists who worked seventy to eighty hours a week. I would make paintings from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. I was always broke. I remember meeting artists older than me who were still living like that—giving everything they could to their art.
I knew I wanted a family, I knew I wanted a personal life, so I thought, I need to structure this. I started working nine to five hours in the studio and setting boundaries. I don’t pull all-nighters. I haven’t for decades. I don’t work on weekends, or it’s rare. Part of building a team had to do with knowing that I want to have children. We moved to the Hudson valley in 2012, and my daughter was born in 2016. I would be making three pieces a year if it was just me.
Castro: For your traveling exhibition This is the Day, you made a 2018 film about a trans cocktail waitress on the Choctaw reservation. Why was that important to make? Did it empower the subject of the film?
Gibson: That’s a good question. I’ve always wanted to make a work –kind of to see myself in Mississippi. I have a family member younger than me who decided not to be in the film who was born biologically male and has been living as a woman for pretty much their entire life. I wanted to do a documentary, and they introduced me to Macy. Macy and I began talking, scripted what the film would be, and made it for that exhibition. The first day we met, she came fully dressed [as a woman] on the reservation, and said, “I’ve never done this before.” We made the film, but it drew attention to her. She lost her job. The criticism was she was a public-facing employee. They wouldn’t accept her as female. It was a great experience for her, but there was the reality of her employment.
Castro: What happened to her?
Gibson: She’s still living there, but, as far as I know, she never got her job back.
Castro: That’s heavy. What are some percolating performance plans of yours?
Gibson: I feel very excited about the video we’re going to show at MASS MoCA. It’s significant because I haven’t done a performance in a long time. I’m very excited by the sound. There might be a future there.
Castro: I know you have a fashion forward side, including designing handbags for Lady Dior. How much fun was that?
Gibson: It was a blast. They are incredible to work with. One designer I worked with will be a panelist for the [Venice October] symposium. There’s so much focus on me being indigenous. It was nice to work with a materials engineer who was excited by the materials and design. There was no talk of, like, heritage or race, just two creative minds pushing what’s possible from a design aesthetic. That was a real opportunity. We’ve done a third one; we might do another one in the future. They’re fun.
I also got a call from the Portland Art Museum that they are potentially acquiring one of the handbags into the Native American Art Collection.
Castro: What about your ceramic practice? You do that also?
Gibson: Yes. I got my first kiln in January, and that’s here in the studio, so I can run things through when I want. The glazes have captured me right now. Working with painting and working with glazes, they do similar things, but you have to plan differently. I have a great ceramic assistant who does lots of tests, so I’m learning how to make happen what I want to make happen in ceramics.
Castro: Perfect! Can you tell me anything about your Met Museum 2025 Façade Commission?
Gibson: Just that it will debut in fall, 2025. These are my first large scale bronze works. The challenge of working with exterior sculpture, for me, has been that I work with so many textiles and hand-worked materials that I’m thinking about how to maintain that quality moving into bronze. I’ve been working with a foundry for a couple of years, and I feel like they’re going to maintain that quality of the hand, which is important to me.
Castro: Have dreams guided you?
Gibson: As I’ve gotten older, I trust the process a lot more. I understand my intuitions are very informed. They’re not independent of the world. Dreams are a part of that. I don’t remember many dreams, but the ancestral spirit figures did originate years ago with a series of dreams. I believe you can ask your dreams questions and that any response your dreams bring to you is legitimate and should be listened to. I believe things around me have their own kind of lived narratives. Prayer serves a valuable purpose for me and for people in general—it’s a way to engage with the world with a sense of faith.