Biennale Artist Jeffrey Gibson On Spirituality, Ecology in Politics and His Next Chapter

Last week, the artist Jeffrey Gibson launched The Spirits Are Laughing, an eleven-minute animation that draws from his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage to promote an urgent, spiritual message about the environment just in time for Climate Week NYC and this past weekend’s Creative Time Summit. The work has been featured on billboards, digital signage, and guerrilla projections across New York City in locations like the High Line and Union Square, and will soon be featured in IKE Smart City Kiosks in nine cities across the U.S., including Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston and Miami. The project was produced in collaboration with Virginia Shore of Shore Art Advisory, and we caught up with the artist—who represented the United States in this year’s Venice Biennale—to hear more about it.

How has life been for you as the Venice Biennale winds down? You were well-known before, but now it seems like everyone can’t stop talking about your work.

Life has been extremely busy since the Biennale entered the picture. There is still a three-day symposium that will take place in Venice during the last week of October, and we are working on an ambitious catalog and continuing to work with some educators in order to create some teaching tools that can be shared beyond the Biennale. I have tried to calm things down a bit since the opening and have been hiding out in the studio and have continued making new work that will be shown at Mass MoCA this fall. I’m excited about this new exhibition because it is pretty different from the works shown in Venice, which were intentionally so specific, and I can open up to more experimentation with the exhibition at Mass MoCA. I honestly have avoided reading too much of the press surrounding the Biennale because it has been an emotionally and physically intense period when I just needed to remain focused and complete what I set out to do.

What does Venice have to teach us about global warming?

Venice is a conundrum when it comes to the subject of global warming. I kept thinking about the history of how Venice was built upon more than 100 tiny islands and how the Venice that visitors experience is not on a natural mass of land but one that has been constructed. Venice is sinking because of the rising sea levels caused by global warming, among other things. In some ways, Venice is a model of how we might attempt to handle current and future climate challenges. The high volume of tourism in Venice contributes to the overall problem of global warming and contrasts efforts to make our lives more locally centered, which I am in favor of, but the global impact of Venice as an international cultural hub and port of exchange still holds a lot of draw and influence in terms of what the world sees and becomes aware of. The Biennale started in 1895, the United States joined in 1930, and its curators are responsive to larger cultural conversations happening throughout the world. I believe that eco-critical conversations will have an impact on how international biennials take shape going forward.

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There’s been much discussion lately about the degree to which artists have a duty to their politics. How do you feel about this matter? 

I think everyone, not just artists, has a duty to their politics. People need to be engaged in their communities and the larger world. It simply makes the world a better place when we are involved and aware of it. The term politics, for me, describes any form of a power relationship and they are not only relegated to the traditional institutions of political governments. Artists are often made to feel that we must share everything with the public, and I don’t agree with that. We are allowed to have private lives, opinions and conversations in support of our own mental well-being and of those around us.

This latest project seeks to explore the intersection of climate change, Indigenous identity and social justice. Where do those intersections exist, in your mind?

This project, The Spirits Are Laughing, originated with a Hudson Valley-based organization called The Hudson Eye in 2021. I was commissioned to make an installation on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge between Hudson and Catskill. I would walk across the bridge, over the Hudson River, and could not help but think about the Moh-He-Con-Nuck, the Peoples of the Waters that Are Never Still, who were removed from the region. I tried to imagine what the landscape looked like before their removal. The bridge connects the two historic properties of Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, two central figures of the Hudson River School, whose paintings omit the colonial histories of the landscapes they painted. I could see both houses on opposite sides of the river. I felt compassion for the land, the river, the animals, the sky and the people, and I wanted to imagine what they had to say to me. That is where the text comes from. I looked to Indigenous kinship philosophies that acknowledge all living beings as connected and as relatives. It felt like a necessary humility that I wanted to share with others. The current iteration uses the same text but is projected onto buildings and bridges and is also shown as part of electronic billboards around New York City and in other parts of the country.

This will be projected at various locations across the city. Are you looking forward to its reception at any venue in particular?

I have lived upstate for twelve years now, so the locations in the city where the projections will take place are places that hold some memory of my time living there from 1999 to 2012. I am excited to see the piece projected at the Brooklyn Bridge, Union Square and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Your work makes room for the spiritual, which too many artists eschew, alongside earnestness. How did you come to embrace this element of your work?

I had to embrace these things for myself and my mental clarity. The pull of being performative in contemporary culture was so strong and disruptive to my growth as an artist and as an individual that I needed to get away from other voices and distractions. That is when I decided to move upstate, focus on my work and my family, and be surrounded by more nature.

We’re nearing the end of an election in which climate has failed to be discussed at length, especially when compared to issues like pet care. Do you see any hope for ecology in American politics?

It’s really hard to maintain hope for significant changes to be made regarding the environment. There are so many financial interests tied up in making those changes, and it seems that we are bracing to accommodate the challenges rather than make the hard changes necessary to turn things around. I am hopeful for more localized community-based groups to both teach and model practices that enable us to be healthier people (physically, mentally and spiritually). In my mind, I envision these smaller groups multiplying and ultimately connecting into larger communities that have a foundational understanding of what it means to have a genuine respectful relationship with the land, one where we realize that the environment is an extension of ourselves and if we are neglecting or harming the environment then we are truly practicing self-harm.