Visiting Artist: Jeffrey Gibson

Combining craft media with painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Jeffrey Gibson’s work simultaneously builds on traditions of geometric abstraction found in both modern art and his own cultural heritage. Raised in the United States and abroad, Gibson is a member of The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. His work blends his upbringing and diverse interests to explore issues of personal and cultural memory, mining both for moments of intimacy, community, and self-realization. His works often directly or indirectly represent the body, referencing traditions of adornment and performance as disparate as pow-wows and nightclubs, rave culture and 19th-century Iroquois beadwork. His broad output shares an eclecticism and vibrancy that led fellow American Indian artist Jimmie Durham to refer to Gibson as “our Miles Davis.” Gibson received his Master of Fine Arts at The Royal College of Art, London and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work can be found in the permanent collections of many major art museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Denver Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, the National Academy Museum in New York, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the Cornell Museum of Fine Art. The Denver Art Museum will mount a traveling mid-career survey of his work in the spring of 2018. He has participated in Greater New York at MoMA PS1, Prospect New Orleans, the Everson Biennale, and Site Santa Fe. Gibson is a member of the faculty at Bard College and a past TED Foundation Fellow and Joan Mitchell Grant recipient. He is represented by MARC STRAUS (NYC). This lecture is part of the Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series at Boston University School of Visual Arts.