Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, will represent the United States at the next edition of the Venice Biennale, making history as the first Indigenous artist to represent a solo exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion. Gibson, a multidisciplinary artist, draws upon his interests in punk music and rave culture to create a dialogue between modernist geometric abstraction and the Indigenous American traditions of his heritage. Sampling a wide variety of media, Gibson synthesizes traditions to create something completely contemporary and new.
In Shield #3, 2012, the artist appropriates a symbol of Western domesticity, an ironing board, covers it with an elk hide parchment support, and paints layers of color to create a shield form. Shield #3 represents both shared experience and unique cultural identity as Gibson positions an icon of western domesticity alongside a reference to parfleche, a rawhide container made of animal hide and painted with geometric patterns, historically used to hold household items, as he weaves together symbols of homemaking from his own upbringing. The elk hide parchment in Shield #3 becomes a canvas for bright shapes which recall the geometric designs and powwow traditions of Gibson’s heritage. Utilizing both pattern and personal objects, Gibson’s work invokes the presence of Indigenous American visual tradition within, and distinctively apart from, Western convention.
