Jeffrey Gibson’s Celebrated Venice Biennale Exhibit at The Broad

Drawing on his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage, Gibson integrates Indigenous arts and crafts with American, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ historical references, pop culture, and global artistic traditions, creating brightly colored paintings, intricate beadwork, towering sculptures, flags, striking photography, and immersive video experiences. 

A powerful storyteller, Gibson’s work expresses multicultural experiences, as well as both the Indigenous and queer fights for freedom and equality, often juxtaposing text– from legal documents and civil rights quotes to song lyrics– to add additional social commentary, revealing intersections between contemporary issues and past histories. Married to Norwegian artist Rune Olsen, Gibson is an outspoken advocate for queer acceptance. His work celebrates resilience and identity, embodying a belief in the power of art to heal through expressing love and acceptance for all people.

For over twenty years, Gibson has used art to examine the framework of meaning– of how the patterns of language, music, and craft express our connections to each other and with the greater world. Influenced by the rhythms of music, including pow-wows, Motown, hip-hop, African funk, jazz, house music, and pop– as well as by the day glow colors favored at raves– Gibson creates an artistic dialogue, seamlessly combining realism, modernism, and traditional Indigenous patterns. He has exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally. 

The Broad show features most of the components of the Venice exhibition, including ten paintings, seven sculptures, three murals, and a video installation, as well as eight rainbow-adjacent flags which decorated the outer pavilion. 

Recently acquired by the Broad, one of the largest paintings in the exhibition, THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG (2024), spells out a quote from an openly racist 1902 letter written by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to a California school superintendent. Rendered in Gibson’s colorful block lettering, the words fit into the larger geometric pattern like puzzle pieces, feeling like a bright and joyful rebellion against racist policies.

A video installation celebrating Indigenous matriarchy, She Never Dances Alone (2019) features acclaimed jingle dress dancer and Miss Native American USA 2013–14, Sarah Ortegon. The video begins and ends with a close-up of Ortegon’s face, gathering herself for the dance and then calmly catching her breath, gazing with powerful intent out at the audience. 

Wearing a handmade jingle dress adorned with jingles, or rows of ziibaaska’iganan (metal cones), she dances against a black background, her image mirrored and multiplied into kaleidoscopic geometric patterns. It creates the sense that she dances with her mothers, sisters, and grandmothers, invoking the ancient matriarchal tradition behind the dance.  

WE WANT TO BE FREE, a tall beaded humanoid sculpture wearing a fabulous robe with gracefully trailing sleeves, with a rainbow skirt pooling at its feet and a fringed collar, directly references the Civil Rights Act of 1866, while also invoking contemporary human rights violations. 

the space in which to place me runs through September 28th. Admission to this special exhibition is free Thursday evenings, 5 to 8 pm. Special exhibition tickets are always free for visitors 17 years old and under.