Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer

Denver Art Museum

Curated by John P. Lukavic

By Jeff Siemers

Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition “Like a Hammer” brings the topics of identity, time, race, heritage, popular culture and philosophical inquiry into play. The exhibition of approximately 57 works, curated by John P. Lukavic, the curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum, integrates Gibson’s Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, bold statements of language from popular culture and songs, and forthright autobiographical exploration. The exhibition presents Gibson’s security as an interdisciplinary artist in works of various media such as beadwork, video, painting and sculpture. The museum space contains brightly colored artworks that feature traditional Native American materials and textures concurrent with modern objects, such as punching bags interwoven with text pulled from songs by Public Enemy. These various influences serve as an autobiographical journey that displays Gibson’s attunement to repetition and his command of appropriation.

Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band Choctaw/Cherokee), OUR FREEDOM IS WORTH MORE THAN OUR PAIN, 2017, repurposed punching bags, glass beads, artificial sinew, acrylic felt, steel and brass, 114” × 71” × 42.” Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan. Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Peter Mauney.

Gibson’s work moves beyond a contemporary artist using traditional Native American techniques in a contemporary fashion. His artistic voice is uniquely his own but has the strength to speak for others in their own quest for identity. The brand of his punching bag pieces is Everlast, which suggests a permanence to his artistic expression. Several of these bags are monochromatic, with the name of the piece beaded into the side; a fire-engine-red bag titled People Like Us, a black-and-gray bag titled I’m Not Perfect and a white bag titled White Power are displayed. Gibson transforms the activity of training for boxing and recontextualizes individualized self-exertion.

In the 2017 piece Our Freedom is Worth More Than Our Pain, Gibson builds from the earlier punching bags with the Everlast logo and displays two punching bags incorporated into the scales of justice. These fully beaded punching bags with the text of the title on each one speak to the pain of the past with a plea for freedom in the future. One cannot overlook the inclusiveness of Gibson’s work, as it speaks to the political realities of Native Americans and everyone else, as well. Wall text from the exhibition quotes Gibson: “My being is political…I am political every day of my life.” The political self-awareness of Gibson’s autobiographical approach is found in its desired freedom in the future.

In the exhibition catalog, Gibson references both the Pete Seeger and Lee Hays song If I Had a Hammer and Friedrich Nietzsche’s reference to “philosophizing with a hammer” as being influential in the title of the exhibition. Gibson’s approach features the bluntness of a tool such as a hammer coupled with the power of humility and self-disclosure and with an eye toward the future as its greatest strength. He uses familiar text and builds upon multiple meanings to bring an aesthetic complexity to his work. His approach, akin to that of Nietzsche’s, breaks apart established norms and invites the viewer to approach resistance with clarity. The strength of the exhibition is found in Gibson’s ability to confront the viewer’s identity through the transparency of examining his own. Whether it is through a stylized punching bag or a neon tube in a rawhide quiver, Gibson brings to realization the complicated mixture of influences found in our present age and confronts discrimination found within. By taking ownership of diverse materials, forms and his own history, Gibson’s visual assertion gives momentum to an empowered future for marginalized voices.

(May 13 - August 12, 2018)

Jeff Siemers is an artist and educator residing in Kenai, Alaska. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.

Filed Under: Reviews