Exhibitions

JEFFREY GIBSON: THE BODY ELECTRIC

Frist Art Museum / 919 Broadway February 3, 2023 - April 23, 2023

Jeffrey Gibson

This major exhibition is devoted to one of today’s leading artists whose multidisciplinary practice combines aspects of traditional Indigenous art and culture with a modernist visual vocabulary. Born in Colorado in 1972, Jeffrey Gibson is of Cherokee heritage and a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw. His vibrant work, which is represented in more than 20 permanent collections across the United States, is a call for Indigenous empowerment as well as queer visibility and environmental sustainability. The Body Electric is a survey of his recent paintings, sculpture, video, and installations, along with a large site-specific mural THE LAND IS SPEAKING ARE YOU LISTENING. The exhibition’s title is inspired by a song written for the 1980 musical Fame, which drew from Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric” from his 1855 collection, Leaves of Grass. The lyrics reverently acknowledge our place in the natural world, while honoring the universality of endings and beginnings.

Jeffrey Gibson holds a MA at the Royal College of Art in London and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gibson is currently a visiting artist at Bard College in New York. He is represented in the permanent collections of museums, including the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Portland Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gibson is a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric is part of the Tennessee Triennial for Contemporary Art, a program of Tri-Star Arts.

Organized by SITE Santa Fe and curated by Brandee Caoba