[Find the Mercury‘s Queer Guide in print—available in more than 500 spots citywide!—eds.]
International exhibition the Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious places to present contemporary visual art in the world, and artist Jeffrey Gibson currently represents the US with the space in which to place me.
Gibson’s work fills the US pavilion with dazzling, fluorescent patterns, text that speaks to the history of forced displacement, perpetrated upon Indigenous communities by colonialist settlers, and a massive sculpture of red pedestals that visitors can climb on. There’s plenty of Portland connection to Gibson, a queer Choctaw and Cherokee artist whose work They Come From Fire was in a special exhibition at PAM in 2022.
The inclusion of Portland’s premiere drag clown Carla Rossi, during the Biennale’s opening festivities, added yet another layer.
