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Relevance of Place: Jeffrey Gibson

Shannon Jackson interviews cross-media artist Jeffrey Gibson about the arts, geological time, and the importance of indigenous perspectives, both in his practice and at Tippet Rise Art Center. In this episode, Gibson shares indigenous understandings of the land and the importance of a decolonial imagination in publicly-engaged art. Watch to hear him discuss his personal trajectory as an artist committed to aesthetic abstraction, to Native social movements, and to an increasingly collaborative practice amongst artists and local communities.

Filmed in May 2023.

Jeffrey Gibson

Artist Jeffrey Gibson smiles and looks off to the left of the image frame.

Jeffrey Gibson’s multimedia practice synthesizes the cultural and artistic traditions of his Cherokee and Choctaw heritage with the visual languages of Modernism and themes from contemporary popular and queer culture. His work is a vibrant call for queer and Indigenous empowerment, envisioning a celebration of strength and joy within these communities. Gibson’s work is included in the permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National museum of the American Indian.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College and lives and works near Hudson, New York. Gibson is a recipient of numerous awards, notably a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019), and was selected to represent the United States at the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most significant international arts events.

Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson holds the Hadidi Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently serves as Chair of the History of Art Department. Jackson is a scholar and educator of cross-media art practice and of socially-engaged art. A Guggenheim fellow and award-winning author, she has published several books and online platforms, including Back Stages (2022), Public Servants (2016), The Builders Association (2015), Social Works (2011) as well as In Terms of Performance and Media Art 21. Jackson serves on the boards of several arts organizations, including Oakland Museum of the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Minnesota Street Project Foundation, and the Kramlich Art Foundation. As a guest program advisor to Tippet Rise, Jackson helped to create the Relevance of Place series of site-specific dialogues.