I think about the kind of comic drama of our day-to-day lives, especially here in New York City.
So I always imagine animals talking about us, like gossiping, “Did you see this human do this today?”
And like, “They ate that.”
And then “We saw someone get in an argument,” and “This one said that.”
I enjoy kind of flipping the script and imagining them talking about us.
Jeffrey Gibson, Artist
And to be quite honest, we're pretty comical, you know?
When I was invited to make new work for The Genesis Facade Commission, that was the beginning of thinking about this idea of creating figurative forms in states of transformation.
My father is Choctaw, my mother is Cherokee.
Like a Hammer 2016
Transformation happens within Native American cultures, in the context of ceremony.
Growing up in a lot of the dances, you personify different animals, and in turn, you're paying homage to those animals, you’re showing respect to them.
The animals are empowered as teachers.
So the title of the four sculptures all together is The Animal That Therefore I Am.
I chose the four animals which include a coyote, a squirrel, a hawk, and a deer.
I wanted to choose animals that exist here in New York.
Bizarrely, all of these animals also historically exist in Central Park, which surround The Met.
I wanted to make the maquettes by hand because sculpturely to me, you need movement.
If you look at the base of them, they all start with armatures made from driftwood that's been pulled out of the Hudson River here.
But as you move up, it transforms into hide and then into fur and then into blankets and then into adornment, and then into a face.
It's not a hundred percent any one of those things.
I want there to feel like there's some sense of transformation within the figure.
Jane Panetta
Aaron I. Fleischman Curator
Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Met
I think it felt really exciting to have him doing the Facade Commission, because it was a different kind of project than he'd ever done before.
This had to be four sculptures that could live outside for a long period of time in these niches.
He also had never made large scale bronze sculptures.
It became really exciting to think about how he would translate his longstanding interest in materiality into bronze, which is thought to be more static.
I was very nervous about making bronze sculptures.
The hardest thing was to figure out how to make every part feel like it had a different texture if you touched it.
I want people to want to touch it.
What's incredible is we were able to get the string, we were able to create every bead to have slight differences between them.
I didn't want paint because it really does feel like a skin on it, but patina feels like it's rubbed inherently into the surface.
David Breslin
Leonard A. Lauder Curator in Charge
Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Met
I really admire any artist who takes on this project, because I think there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with this. There’s not only the millions of people who use those doors as an entry to The Met.
It's the millions who pass this building all the time.
What Jeffrey does is allow so many different kinds of audiences to see themselves in the work.
I really like to see myself as part of this lineage, in particular within indigenous cultures, of innovation, imagination, imaging.
We didn't break from the lineage.
You still need that actual handmade something if you want to maintain that quality through to the end.
There's a level of optimism in his work.
He wants to imagine what different possibilities for the future can be.
I just don't know how we are going to create a sustainable future without all of us, different kinds of beings, seen as equals on this planet.
I hope other people will understand that our future is very dependent on our ability to intentionally look at things and intentionally take the time to process.
We really need each other.
Organized by The Met.
Presented by Genesis.