Your Spirit Whispers in My Ear, 2024 Five-channel video with sound, TRT: 22:27

“Jeffrey Gibson’s POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT is a newly commissioned immersive installation filling MASS MoCA’s signature Building 5 gallery that follows Gibson’s highly celebrated United States representation at the 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia. Throughout the run of the exhibition, the project will host a series of performances by Indigenous creatives from across North America. Gibson views the exhibition as an invitation to other Indigenous creatives to contribute to a space where difference is not only considered, it is celebrated.

POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT also offers an exploration into the term “two-spirit”, a third gender which is both, and neither, male or female and is often embraced by many Indigenous individuals and communities to encompass gender and spiritual identity. The exhibition will include the 1992 documentary Two Spirit People by Michel Beauchemin, Lori Levy, and Gretchen Vogel, which features Indigenous two-spirit individuals discussing the term and their identities as creatives on the streets of the Bay Area.

A new video installation, suspended from the ceiling, will accompany the documentary harnessing both contemporary and early drag culture that facilitates in creating a club-like atmosphere in the first half of the gallery. Titled Your Spirit Whispers in My Ear (2024), the collection of videos are edited by Sancia Miala Shiba Nash with a soundtrack by Patrick “Reachout” Coll and the material for the videos is crowd-sourced from more than 20 Indigenous two-spirit individuals, DJs, drag performers, academics, and activists. “

https://massmoca.org/event/jeffrey-gibson-2024/