JEFFREY GIBSON WILL REPRESENT UNITED STATES AT THE 60TH VENICE BIENNALE IN 2024

Celebrated for an artistic practice that combines American, Indigenous, and Queer histories with influences from music and pop culture, Gibson creates a dynamic visual language that reflects the inherent diversity and hybridity of American culture. Using abundant color, complex pattern, and text, he invites deep reflection on identity, inspires empathy, and advocates for a widening of access to democracy and freedom for all. On view April 20 through November 24, 2024, the Biennale provides international audiences with the first major opportunity to experience Gibson’s work outside of the U.S.

A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Gibson will be the first Indigenous artist to have a solo exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion. This exhibition is also the first to be co-commissioned and co-curated by a Native American curator. The 2024 U.S. Pavilion is co-commissioned by Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum and a member of the Navajo Nation, Louis Grachos, Phillips Executive Director of SITE Santa Fe, and Abigail Winograd, independent curator, and is co-curated by Ash-Milby and Winograd. 

For the U.S. Pavilion, Gibson will activate the interior and exterior of the U.S. Pavilion with a series of new and recent works that invite reflection on individual and collective identities including sculpture, paintings, multimedia works and a site-specific installation activating the pavilion’s courtyard. In conjunction with the presentation at the U.S. Pavilion and in partnerships with the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe, NM) and Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), Portland and SITE will also develop year-long educational programming.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent who currently lives and works near Hudson, NY. Gibson’s approach to art-making is defined by its hybrid and cosmopolitan nature, largely informed by his international upbringing in the U.S., Korea, and Germany. During his itinerant childhood as the son of a retired civil employee of the U.S. Army, he found solace and friendship in the world of music, at various times exploring the sounds and social traditions of the punk and rave music of his generation, and in the powwow traditions of his intertribal Native heritage. Resisting static, preconceived notions of what people believe Native American art looks like, he combines Native art traditions with the visual languages of modernism to explore the confluence of personal identity, culture, history, and international social narratives.