WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHEN DO YOU WANT IT?

Jeffrey Gibson, Choctaw / Cherokee / American, born 1972
Choctaw
Cherokee
Southeast

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2016

Driftwood, hardware, recycled wool army blanket, canvas, glass beads, Artist's owned re-purposed painting, artificial sinew, metal jingles, metal studs, nylon fringe, nylon ric rac, high fire glazed ceramic

Overall: 92 1/2 × 39 × 64 in. (235 × 99.1 × 162.6 cm)

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Evelyn A. and William B. Jaffe Fund, the Acquisition and Preservation of Native American Art Fund, the Contemporary Art Fund, the William S. Rubin Fund, and the Anonymous Fund #144

© Jeffrey Gibson

2017.47

Geography

Place Made: United States, North America

Period

21st century

Object Name

Sculpture

Research Area

Native American: Southeast

Sculpture

Not on view

Label

Jeffrey Gibson’s What Do You Want? When Do You Want It? gives us a globalized problematic "messy" modern figure, a joyous dancer clothed with powwow fringe, trade blankets, and jingles, unburdened by any one tribal, gendered, or sexualized heritage or history, complicated and enhanced by the many possibilities for being, for identity, for an individualized authenticity.

The way we describe identity here is so reductive. . . . It never bleeds into seeing you as a more multifaceted person. . . . I’m finally at the point where I can feel comfortable being your introduction to American Indian culture. . . . It’s just a huge acceptance of self. . . . Once I thought of myself as the center, the world opened up. —Jeffrey Gibson

From the 2019 exhibition Portrait of the Artist as an Indian / Portrait of the Indian as an Artist, guest curated by Rayna Green

Course History

NAS 30.18, Indians Who Rock the World: Native American Contemporary Music, Davina Two Bears, Spring 2019

ANTH 3, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Spring 2019

SART 23, Figure Sculpture, Leslie Fry, Spring 2019

Exhibition History

Convene: Jeffrey Gibson - Hilary Harnischfeger - Joel Otterson - Lisa Sanditz, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, March 15, 2016 – May 22, 2016

Jeffrey Gibson: Speak to Me, Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, Oklahoma City, OK, Feburary 9 – June 11, 2017

Portrait of the Artist as an Indian / Portrait of the Indian as an Artist, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 23, 2020.

Publication History

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 217, ill. plate no. 148.

Provenance

Marc Straus Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2017.

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