Exhibition & Museum Writing, No. ❹
June 4, 2022 – September 1, 2026
Art and Design from 1900 to Now
Multiple Galleries, RISD Museum
Labels written with editing by Kate Irvin and Amy Pickworth
Jeffrey Gibson
Choctaw-Cherokee, Mississippi Band, b. 1972 in Colorado; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
Canvas, cotton, vinyl, brass grommets, nylon thread, artificial sinew, dried pear gourds, glass beads, plastic beads, birch, porcupine quills, and nylon ribbon
Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund 2019.56
Jeffrey Gibson tackles issues of North American colonialism and postcolonial mindsets by focusing on materiality, human agency, and Indigenous and Queer activism in his artwork. In this piece, dried gourds, glass beads, and sinew reference powwow regalia, but in a contemporized form and scale. Gibson uses porcupine quills on the sleeves and also incorporates fabric printed with a quill pattern on the ground. The electric palette of neon oranges, yellows, pinks, and greens draws from Gibson’s Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, as well as from 1980s and 1990s Queer culture. The repeated text on the front body of the garment, “Stand Your Ground,” references American state policies that give residents the right to use guns when feeling threatened.
Chris Ofili, b. 1968 in Manchester, UK; lives and works in Trinidad and Tobago
Two Palms Press, publisher
Selection of 6 prints from the portfolio
Etching, gravure, and aquatint on pigmented paper
Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund 2016.40.1
Figures intertwined in sexual activity slowly reveal themselves in the twilight shadows of these metallic surfaces. The imagery is reminiscent of shunga, the Japanese word for erotic art, a woodblock print genre that thrived during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867). Ofili’s prints often allude to eroticism, spirituality, nature, and myth; their overwhelming blueness, evocative and captivating, accentuates such imagery. These prints are dynamic—they shift and shimmer with light and movement. The stories embedded in them unfold over time, when examined with care and concentration.
Installation view of Art and Design from 1900 to NowOn view 06-04-2022 through 09-01-2026 at the RISD Museum.