Artist Interview: Jeffrey Gibson

Jeffrey Gibson, a Member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Half Cherokee, is an interdisciplinary artist based near Hudson, New York. His artworks make reference to various aesthetic and material histories rooted in Indigenous cultures of the Americas, and in modern and contemporary subcultures. Gibson often incorporates laborious beadwork and other fine handicraft in his artworks, as a way to preserve cultural traditions and to counter the eradication of these crafts. Following his recent site-specific exhibition I AM YOUR RELATIVE at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, we spoke with Gibson about his artistic practice and ideas about the importance of art, community, connection, and healing traumas.

Shira Wolfe: Jeffrey, I’m curious to hear about your first interactions with art, and what inspired you to pursue art yourself? 

Jeffrey Gibson: I was really the kid who drew all the time, and my family moved around a lot due to my father’s job. He was a civil engineer with the US government, so we lived in Europe, we lived in Korea, we lived in the US. And the ability to draw was something I was able to take with me. My father traveled a lot for work, and he would always bring me back a poster of an artwork from the museums he visited. I don’t know why he bought me a lot of Matisse posters, but I remember always having a lot of them in my room. And I didn’t realize how large his cut-outs actually were. When I was 15 or 16 I saw one of the cut-outs in person, at the National Gallery in Washington DC, and I remember feeling nauseous, it was just such a shock, going from something I thought was sort of poster-size on my wall, to seeing this entire room filled. 

SW: It’s like your version of the Stendhal Syndrome.

JG: Yeah, and I felt so nauseous I had to sit down! So those posters in particular go back to when I was quite young. 

SW: When it comes to your art, what are the most important elements in the interaction between the viewer and your art?

JG: I really care that it engages somebody, I do care that there is some level of communication that happens between the viewer and the artwork. And I care that somebody can walk away with some degree of understanding. For me, it’s a marker for when an artwork is complete, and it is a marker for how I determine whether it’s a strong artwork by myself. They really are meant to be generous in their communication. There’s no hidden agenda. It’s a mix of directness, beauty, and trying to allow people to be vulnerable to some degree in front of the artworks. 

SW: And did you always have a sense of: “this is how I want to do it, and these are the topics that I want to engage with”?

JG: No, it’s an ongoing process. I taught for nearly 20 years, so I see it from both sides. I think so much of contemporary art thrives on a fatalistic perspective on the world. It’s almost as if students are encouraged to amplify their dysfunction, their pain, their angst. And to me, that’s totally valid, and a lot of my work even begins that way, but in terms of who we can be as humans, I’m interested in working through that and getting to another side.

I don’t like using the word evolution because it’s so loaded, but it is kind of like an evolutionary transformation of strength, of being a feeling person. Somebody who can be intellectual, understand the world in the best way they can, does their best to make sense of it, can share that information, and can move forward from it in support of a better world.

SW: It’s about reaching out to others.

JG: Yes, and you know, for many years I worked as a museum educator. And what we’re talking about a lot now in institutions is, how do we get Native Americans and Indigenous people into institutions? And you have to reflect them in their perspective. We’re still figuring out exactly what that means, but if you give something that people can relate to on a personal level, it feels good. It feels good to stand in front of a heroic image of someone who looks like you. It’s the psychology of visual information. 

SW: I’m curious to hear more about that as well. You’re working a lot with marginalized voices and reflecting on the histories of Indigenous cultures in the Americas.

JG: In my generation, when I was in my teens and twenties, so the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was a lot about this idea of representation, women, people of color, queer people… I think we’re past that at this point. It’s not just about representation, it’s also about the content. So it’s not just a visual cue of including people, but there are different ways in which different cultures communicate amongst themselves and with other people, different kinds of spaces where people feel safe to express themselves, feel welcome. And I’m realizing more and more it’s such a hugely radical shift. It’s so deeply embedded, the hierarchy of how different cultural perspectives are positioned.

And it is true, sometimes it’s like if we’re speaking to Black Americans, then we forget to speak to Native Americans because they’re being grouped together as people of color. And even within Indigenous communities, there are hundreds of Indigenous communities that operate independently of each other. It’s the way that we’ve talked about Africa for centuries as if it’s one place, and it’s hundreds of countries. So it’s this tremendously big shift that I think is overwhelming in an interesting way right now.

But I think about who I am speaking to, and it drives a lot of my collaborations. In the collaborations, I invite people who have another kind of knowledge base. We can come together and make something that speaks to somebody more than how I know how to speak to them. And I think I know how to speak to a lot of people. But it is also about dispelling the myth of the independent, singular artist and crediting knowledge. When I know where it’s coming from, it’s not right for me to ascribe myself to someone else’s knowledge, just because I’m the one presenting it. 

SW: Could you give some examples of your collaborations?

JG: I’m doing a project right now with the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and we’re doing a series of glass protest signs that will be projected onto a wall of images with people from the community. And we requested the participation of people who identify as a person of color, Indigenous, or queer. And the day that we shot the photographs, about 90 people showed up. Those are 90 different people, and I gave them the opportunity to present themselves the way they wanted to be presented. People showed up with masks and artworks, wore their traditional regalia; they showed up with their crews, and families… Nobody was generic, nobody was a generalized version of any of those qualifying descriptions. And people were blown away by the images. 

Then there’s the performance “To Name Another”, which we did at Site Santa Fe, we’ve also done it at the New Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and at the Esker Foundation in Calgary. Each time, it’s radically different, and we’ve worked with nearly 200 people who have worn the same garments and performed the performance. So as an artwork, the garments have some degree of utility. For instance, there was a trans Dené woman at Site Santa Fe, and I let them choose their own words, and the words were: “They protect the land.” When people are at the microphone, I encourage them to improvise as much as they want. And they continued to go on: “They protect the land, she protects the land, he protects the land, trans people protect the land, queer people protect the land.” And it’s this way that things proliferate so easily, as long as you give people the space.