These four curious creatures stare at passers-by in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a sense, early paintings made by Indigenous artist Jeffrey Gibson with raw animal skins. In a speech Monday, Gibson discussed two paintings from 2013, which he had a unique dynamic style on the surface of his brain-tanned elk skin.
While painting on leather, he said, “You encountered scars. You encountered hair follicles. Remind you that this is an animal. If I finished these paintings on a canvas, they could think of them as geometric abstraction and formalism. [But] In that sense, you are reminded that you have 20 animals in your room, and I think it’s a turning point in my understanding of how to change the audience rather than change everything I want to accomplish. ”
In a conversation with curator Jane Panetta, Gibson talks about his latest high-profile product after the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale in the United States and held a major show at Mass Moca (until next fall): four large deer, deer, coyote, a coyote, a squirrel and a hawk and a hawk and a hawk, all of which are presented in the animals.
“Animationism in early global culture is global,” Gibson said of the work. “I’ve been talking about the indigenous kinship philosophy and worldviews that aim to respect all living things as extensions of ourselves, and I remember this series of lectures by Jacques Derrida in 1997, titled “My Animals, So I Am Animals.” When he gave these lectures, they were kind of like animals.
Jeffrey Gibson: They teach us to stay sensitive and trust our instincts issi/awi/deer2025.
Eugenia Burnett Tinsley/Provided by Metropolitan Museum of Art
But the French philosopher Derrida, who is associated with deconstructionism, resonated with it. “The more I read, I think, it’s about putting ourselves at the top of the biological hierarchy rather than acknowledging how animals have their own integrity, their own communities, their own forms of communication and their own society, many of whom are more sustainable than our sustainability.”
Gibson said the sculpture links the Metropolitan location in Central Park with his homes being at a few hours north of the Hudson Valley, as all four animals are known to live in both. “I moved to the state 13 years ago and I was looking at the same mountain every day. I looked at the same water. We actually found a way to accommodate the animals that live there because I feel more Their The space is more controllable than I think they are mine space. ”
Considering that each of Native American rich people wears different kinds of ritual costumes. “That rich man is a body in itself,” the artist said. “It’s never the same as a costume. It’s the same ability to change yourself – although you wear it, you’re the other.”
Jeffrey Gibson: They plan and prepare for future fvni/sa lo li/squirrel2025.
Eugenia Burnett Tinsley/Provided by Metropolitan Museum of Art
As for the four sculptures, distributed over the width of the museum, anyone who happens to stroll on Fifth Street can see, Gibson said, he ended up approaching the project—like all the works he did, as a painter. “I know I made three-dimensional objects, but I still think about them like painting on all four sides.” “I see this On one side, from That On one hand, that’s how I’m sure if I’m interested in four aspects and more than four aspects. ”
