“IT’S COMFORTING TO BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE THINGS GREATER THAN OURSELVES. WHETHER YOU’RE SPEAKING TO THE UNIVERSE, OR GOD, TO A BUDDHA, THERE’S THIS COMFORT THERE.”
“It’s difficult to comprehend Venice while you’re doing it and going through it,” he says. “We did everything possible to use Venice to explore Native American identity, and to expand the idea of identity generally. We used any way possible to expand that message beyond the footprint of the pavilion and in both time and physical space.”
This was accomplished through multiple means. The catalogue included essays by scholars and Indigenous thinkers reflecting on Gibson’s art, and art by Indigenous makers
more broadly. There was a symposium on Indigenous American craft. Indigenous performers brought the art to life through song and dance. Even the photography of the pavilion—as shown in the catalogue and elsewhere—captured the spirit of Gibson’s vision.
Gibson’s Biennale works were designed with non-English speakers in mind, without much context for race politics in the States. Many in the Venice international audience would have been mostly unfamiliar with American racial and power dynamics, at most with a broad understanding gleaned from headlines or movies.
As such, the Venice of the space in which to place me was highly curated. Gibson ensured viewers encountered the show through a particular entrance, guiding their view from one work to the next, so that the show resulted in a, singular and cumulative experience.
When the show moved to The Broad in Los Angeles in 2025, Gibson’s understanding of the works shifted. Los Angeles is home to Indigenous populations, Black populations, Latine populations that would understand the show and Gibson’s work from a more personal and intuitive place.
“The space in which to place me did not need the same exhibition when it was in Los Angeles. It opened a freedom to rearrange the show. I have done a few other exhibitions that traveled. For instance, POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT, at MASS Moca. That show is so specific to that space. It is meant to feel like there is an element that triggers memories of being in, like, a night club. And then being able to play with sound in so large of a space. I don’t know how you can translate that to every gallery or venue,” says Gibson.
The act of being present in the space, of being immersed in the totality of an exhibition seems vital to understanding Gibson’s work. His art quotes so heavily from his loves, his concerns, his lived experiences. The nightclub partying in New York City. His meditations from his current home in the Hudson Valley. The rabble rousing and the
silence. The explosions of color and their harmony. And the viewer, hanging on the string that connects it all.
Jeffrey and I spoke about the universe, the world beyond our world, the way we connect to those two. We spoke about the beings that populate the latter. I brought up my mother-in-law, who died last year. And how my father-in-law and wife see her in their dreams. How real it seems. He agreed and said that he speaks to his grandmothers even now, as he grows older, and their light is in a past that’s more and more distant. But we didn’t have a chance to speak about what it means to be a person here and now—how it feels to be able to see, but in so limited a way. To see in front of us and to resort to faith that there is something beyond, something connecting, something all-encompassing. Call it God, or Nature, or Eternity.
And still, you can look at stills of his exhibitions where people are present and get a sense of what that conversation would have been like. To see individuals speaking to each other about his art. Posing next to it for a photo. Staring, and it’s clear that they’ve been staring for some time. Pondering, thinking, communing. Pulling at the string that connects us all, and feeling the hum—the om that follows.
And to look at people in the gallery, viewing Gibson’s work in concert with other works as the artist intended, another Roberta Flack song comes to mind: “I think of all the many ways / That You were here with us today / And I say a prayer, goodnight.”*
BELOW: Installation views, Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, at The Broad, Los Angeles, May 10 to September 28, 2025. Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com, courtesy of The Broad
FOLLOWED BY: Installation view, Jeffrey Gibson, boshullichi / inlvchi – we will continue to change, Kunsthaus Zürich, 2025, photo by Franca Candrian, Kunsthaus Zürich
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