Jeffrey Gibson, HE SPEAKS TO ANCESTORS, 2018. Digital photograph, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Kavi Gupta, and Roberts Projects

Curator Kathleen Ash-Milby will discuss the history of the American Indian Community House Gallery in New York City, where she served as curator and codirector from 2000–2005. The gallery presented many important exhibitions of indigenous artists, including Jeffrey Gibson’s first solo exhibition in the city.

This gallery talk is presented on the occasion of “Jeffrey Gibson: The Anthropophagic Effect.” Multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) is the artist-in-residence for the Department of Education and Public Engagement’s Winter/Spring R&D Season: INHERITANCE. Gibson’s exhibition will explore the material histories and futures of several Indigenous handcraft techniques and aesthetics,

including Southeastern river cane basket weaving, Algonquian birch bark biting, and porcupine quillwork, as practiced by many tribes across this land long before European settlers arrived. The title “The Anthropophagic Effect” alludes to Oswald de Andrade’s legendary 1928 Anthropophagic Manifesto, which argued that indigenous communities could devour colonizers’ culture as a way of rejecting domination and radically transforming Western culture to their own ends. Gibson notes that Indigenous crafts and designs have “historically been used to signify identity, tell stories, describe place, and mark cultural specificity,” explaining, “I engage