Jeffrey Gibson: THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING
Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
November 4, 2022 – Fall 2023
Jeffrey Gibson, digital graphic (dimensions variable), 2022
The Aspen Art Museum presents THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING, a solo exhibition of work by Jeffrey Gibson on view through Fall 2023. Inaugurated by a live flag spinning performance in August 2022, THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING evolved out of conversations around Indigenous kinship philosophy—the idea of seeing the land as an extension of one’s own family or oneself, and prioritizes looking at everything in our surroundings as an equal living entity. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Gibson’s work both acknowledges and embraces these perspectives.
Gibson presents an assemblage of anthropomorphized sculptural heads that incorporate stones, fossils, and other natural materials, representative of geologic and natural time on the Aspen Art Museum rooftop. These will be placed in dialogue with a grouping of Gibson’s signature brightly colored flags, each with a different pattern, text, lyric, or slogan. In the galleries, the exhibition will also include a corresponding video filmed on site in Aspen that features a group of 15 flag spinners performing and speaking to the land in multiple outdoor sites throughout the Roaring Fork Valley.
To learn more about Jeffrey Gibson: THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING at Aspen Art Museum, click here.