Overview
'They Teach Love' is a solo exhibition by Jeffrey Gibson. Curated from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, it presents a survey of over 35 objects across a span of fifteen years.
Gibson's vibrant interdisciplinary practice combines sculpture and painting, beadwork and video, words and images, incorporating rawhide, tipi poles, sterling silver, wool blankets, jingles, fringe, and sinew—materials that refer to American Indian cultures toward the adornment of quotidian objects such as punching bags, flags, banners, and illuminated signs. Gibson, who is of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, combines aspects of Indigenous art and culture with modernist traditions, navigating and disrupting the expectations placed upon Native artists working within the contemporary art world. At the root of his enterprise lies a core value—objects, and people alike, carry the potential for radical transformation.
Gibson asks us to co-envision a future and to move toward it. Ceaselessly prioritising collective imagination as a tool toward manifestation and realization, the artist has stated, “Don’t accept the circumstances you are in; acknowledge that you are in them and then find a future.” Gibson’s form of hard-earned optimism is rooted in the belief that a critical engagement with the past can help us shape a brighter horizon.
