Bemis Center

This virtual, lecture series investigates and highlights the influence and collaboration of poets and artists, and the intersections between their chosen mediums. Free admission. RSVP required to receive Zoom details. Jeffrey Gibson and Layli Long Soldier August 24, 7 PM CT Jeffrey Gibson’s practice merges aspects of Native American visual culture with allusions to contemporary geometric abstraction. The artist references the colors and patterns of nineteenth-century painted rawhide containers, commonly called parfleche, which is associated with particular Native communities in the Plateau, Plains, and Great Basin regions. His painting, Migration, is currently on view at Bemis in All Together, Amongst Many: Reflections on Empathy. By intermingling these designs with a style linked to celebrated, non-Native artists such as Frank Stella and Joseph Albers, Migration contests an American art history that very often overlooks Native American art. Layli Long Soldier’s first volume of poetry, “Whereas”, published in 2017, explores the systemic violence against and cultural erasure of native tribes in the United States through a thoughtful investigation of language. “Whereas” responds to the cautiously phrased and quietly passed 2009 U.S. Congressional Apology to Native Peoples for the history of genocidal policies and actions the United States Federal government has enacted against them. In writing these poems, Long Soldier studied similar apologies from governments across the world to indigenous peoples and considered the nature of authentic apology.