Where craft meets politics, and beauty becomes resistance
In his vast studio in Upstate New York, Jeffrey Gibson crafts a visual language that bridges Indigenous tradition and contemporary Art. A member of the Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee Nations, Gibson is one of the leading voices of Indigenous Futurism – a movement that merges ancestral knowledge with technology and speculative thinking.
As the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States at the 68th Venice Biennale (2024), Gibson reflects on this historic moment:
“Indigenous culture doesn’t end at the border of the reservation … it is entitled to move around the world freely.”
Color as Language, Craft as Power
Gibson’s practice merges traditional handcrafts — beadwork, rawhide, quilting, and protest signage — with a distinctly modern sensibility.
His works use the tactility of materials to convey both resistance and seduction, queerness and belonging.
“Untitled Figure 2 is made up of thousands of bone pipe beads… it’s meant to disarm presumptions about what native identity looks like.”
Now part of the National Gallery of Australia’s permanent collection, Untitled Figure 2 (2022) embodies Gibson’s ability to reframe identity through texture, light, and movement.
In Practice: Art as Process
Working from a repurposed schoolhouse in the Hudson Valley, Gibson’s creative environment is as layered as his art — a site of memory, queerness, and reclaiming.
Directed by Sean Frank, the short film In Practice: Jeffrey Gibson explores his process: weaving political consciousness, personal experience, and ancestral storytelling into one resonant practice.
Art as Connection
For Gibson, art is both political act and spiritual offering — a way to bridge the personal and the collective, the past and the yet-to-come.
His sculptures and installations are not only seen, but felt: as bold affirmations of identity, resilience, and joy.
