“These forms,” Gibson says, “look toward the future with hopes of establishing a different conversation regarding what indigeneity could look like.”
Jeffrey Gibson is master of myriad mediums. Painting, sculpture, Southeastern river cane basket weaving, Algonquian birch bark biting, porcupine quillwork. The variety reflects and draws from his diverse background: He’s of Choctaw-Cherokee descent and gay. This mélange comes together beautifully in “Jeffrey Gibson: Infinite Indigenous Queer Love,” at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Among the approximately 20 works in the show—an assortment of collages, large-scale mixed media, and performance videos, plus a 21-foot-tall ziggurat installed outdoors—are a trio of vibrant hanging sculptures. The tall, 6-foot-square columns are composed of tens of thousands of lengths of the same fringe often used in Indigenous dance regalia, in a rainbow of radiant colors derived from the palette of sunsets and desert skies. The result is a merging of hard-edge shapes and soft, craft-based materiality. “These forms,” Gibson says, “look toward the future with hopes of establishing a different conversation regarding what indigeneity could look like.”
Red Moon, Red Sunset, and Desert Sky, 12-foot-tall sculptures composed of 50,000 strands of fringe sourced from Crazy Crow Trading Post, a supplier of Native American arts and craft materials, appear in Jeffrey Gibson: Infinite Indigenous Queer Love, at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, through March 12, 2022.
