AMNY, March 8, 2020: Reexamining narratives around Native American art at Brooklyn Museum exhibition
Native American artist Jeffrey Gibson’s work is part of a brand new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum which examines misconceptions around Native art and biases by non-Native artists.
The Brooklyn Museum asked Gibson, who is of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, to explore its collection of Native American objects, which he did along with including his own art, and commentary by historian Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch, to offer new narratives on Indigenous people and their history and stories.
The exhibition is called “Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks,” and the title comes from an Irish proverb, which Gibson describes in the show as being factual and metaphorically poetic.
“I read ‘fire’ in this quote to describe the innovative making, use of materials, transformative techniques, and the survivalist ethic of Indigenous people,” according to Gibson. “Our use of new and different materials to make things that support ourselves and our communities is the ‘fire’ that continues to break open the static and antiquated ideas regarding who we are and what we are capable of.”
