Jeffrey Gibson and Common Reading installation images at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Tuesday, August 22, 2023. Image by: WSU Photo Services.
Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love is a major exhibition devoted to one of today’s foremost artists, whose vibrant interdisciplinary practice combines sculpture and painting, beadwork and video, words and images, incorporating rawhide, tipi poles, sterling silver, wool blankets, jingles, fringe, and sinew—materials that refer to American Indian cultures toward the adornment of quotidian objects such as punching bags, flags, banners, and illuminated signs. Gibson, who is of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, combines aspects of Indigenous art and culture with modernist traditions, navigating and disrupting the expectations placed upon Native artists working within the contemporary art world. At the root of his enterprise lies a core value—objects, and people alike, carry the potential for radical transformation.
Exclusively curated from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, They Teach Love presents a sweeping survey of over 35 objects across a span of fifteen years. Beginning with examples of the artist’s earliest engagements with printmaking, our exhibition proceeds to include photography, painting, and sculpture, as well as recent forms that express his foray into performance, installation, and video, as well as contemporary adornment in fashion. The latter direction is reflective of intertribal powwows as well as the dance clubs where Gibson found safe spaces as a teenager.
Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love is on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU through March 9, 2024. To learn more, click here.