One Fine Show: Jeffrey Gibson’s ‘POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT’ at MASS MoCA

Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.

Late October of last year saw the passing of John Kinsel Sr., one of the last of the Navajo Code Talkers, who helped secure the Allied victory in the Pacific in World War II. The Navajo language was unwritten and impenetrable to Japan’s skilled codebreakers, though Kinsel and his comrades added another layer through creative use of metaphor when it came to military references. The Economist‘s obituary credits Kinsel with coining the terms “turtle” for tank and “rabbit trail” for troop movements, a thoroughly postmodern blending of Indigenous culture with another that is as American as apple pie: the military-industrial complex.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) is of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, but his work enjoys a similar style of remix. The latest examples of it on display in “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT,” a newly commissioned installation at MASS MoCA’s signature Building 5 gallery that seeks to explore the concept of the “two-spirit,” a third gender that is both—and neither—male and female and is embraced by many Indigenous cultures. Visitors to Gibson’s U.S. pavilion at last summer’s 60th Venice Biennale know that the artist is adept at personally melding queer culture with the beaded rainbows of traditional ceremonies. In this new exhibition, Gibson is going even more tribal, using the show as a platform for Indigenous and two-spirit individuals, over twenty of whom contributed to the show’s video portion, while a host of others will perform inside the gallery throughout the show’s 18 months.

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Theatricality runs through Gibson’s oeuvre, and their contributions are more than mere set dressing. The long hall of Building 5 is filled with several large ornate robes designed by the artist that hang from sticks above seven disco-style dance floors made with bespoke patterns—performance stages of fused glass.

Much of Gibson’s work comes down to these patterns, and the ones in Massachusetts are among their richest and most complex. They are also well-titled. Every Intersection Is a Broken Heart (2024) seems to describe the missed connections within this design. I’m haunted by you (2024) is a frenetic acid trip to the point that you may not know it’s meant to reference anything Indigenous unless you were told, which is when you would notice the quilt-like repetitions of its Day-Glo oscilloscope grooves.

Sometimes your body changes and you don’t remember your dreams (2024) has a warm and dancing pattern and a robe by the same name. This matching feels formal, but most of the pairings are messier. Don’t Make Me Over (2024) seems to speak to this pushing back against tidy categorization and boasts floral bell shapes in holographic vinyl.

It is something to see Gibson in these outfits in a new two-channel video made for the exhibition. This was inspired by a performance from 1988 by Leigh Bowery, in which he tried on costumes at Anthony D’Offay Gallery while looking in a one-way mirror that offered passersby a view of this intimate moment. Gibson’s new show does the hard work of similarly trying to make the intimate large-scale and the big questions personal.

“POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT” is on view at MASS MoCA through May 2026.