Artist Jeffrey Gibson to Represent US at Venice Biennale

Jeffrey Gibson, “People Like Us” (2019), canvas, glass and plastic beads, artificial sinew, dried pear gourds, nickel-plated bells, grosgrain ribbon and tipi pole (photo courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Roberts Projects, and Stephen Friedman Gallery) Kaleidoscopic and ev

The announcement yesterday that Jeffrey Gibson will represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale marks a historic moment. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians with Cherokee ancestral roots, Gibson will be the first Indigenous artist to have a solo exhibition for the US pavilion at the international contemporary art exhibition. Running since 1895, the show attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to the eastern edge of the Italian city each year.

In 1932, Hopi artist Fred Kabotie also represented the US in a group exhibition at the Biennale. Recognized for his paintings of Pueblo ceremonial dances in Santa Fe during the 1910s, his artwork explored themes of displacement and memory during a period widely remembered for federal assimilation policies targeting Indigenous communities in the US.

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