Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson has been selected to represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale. He is the first Indigenous American artist to do so in a solo capacity.
Gibson, 51, announced he had been selected in an Instagram post where he said he felt honored and excited to be chosen for the event. He promised a series of new and recent works that will “invite reflection on individual and collective identities.”
The artist added he will work with two curators: Abigail Winograd, an independent curator, and Kathleen Ash-Milby. Ash-Milby, the curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum, is a member of the Navajo Nation and her contribution to the pavilion makes her the first Indigenous curator to work on the pavilion.
The commissioning party includes SITE Santa Fe director Louis Gracho, making the 2024 U.S. pavilion additionally notably for receiving backing from West Coast over East Coast institutions.
Gibson has long been a favorite of the U.S. State Department. His works have been exhibited at U.S. Embassy locations in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, as well as in Geneva, Switzerland, and Vienna, Austria. His works have also been acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
“The last 15 years of my career have been about turning inward and trying to make something I really wanted to see in the world,” Gibson told s. “Now I want to expand the way people think about Indigeneity.”
He added: “I see myself in a continuum of Indigenous making. I have been trying to imagine what that would look like if those disruptions hadn’t happened.”
The 60th Venice Biennale takes place from April 20 to November 24, 2024, and will feature artists including Archie Moore (Australia), Kapwani Kiwanga (Canada), and John Akomfrah (the U.K.), among many others. See our running guide for more details on the 2024 edition.
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