The U.S. State Department has selected an Indigenous artist to represent the country at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, will be the first such artist to have a solo exhibition in the U.S. Pavilion at the prestigious international arts event.

That’s according to a statement this week from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the government body responsible for co-curating the U.S. Pavilion, alongside Oregon’s Portland Art Museum and SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico.

The State Department’s records of the U.S. Pavilion exhibitions date back to when it was built, in 1930.

Although Indigenous artists have shown work more broadly in Venice over the years, the last time Indigenous artists appeared in the U.S. Pavilion at the Biennale was in 1932 — and that was in a group setting, as part of a mostly Eurocentric exhibition devoted to depictions of the American West.

“In 1932, one of the rooms was devoted to Native American art, but it was done in what I would say was a very ethnographic type of presentation,” said Kathleen Ash-Milby, curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum, and one of the co-commissioners of Jeffrey Gibson’s work in the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. “It grouped native people together and didn’t really focus on their individuality as much. There were Navajo rugs on the floor. There were displays of jewelry. Many of the artists were not named.”

Ash-Milby, who is also the first Native American curator to co-commission and co-curate an exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, told NPR her team selected Gibson because of the artist’s wide-ranging, inclusive and critical approach to art-making.

“His work is multifaceted. It incorporates all sorts of different types of media,” the curator, a member of the Navajo Nation, said. “But to me, what’s most important is his ability to connect with both his culture and different communities, and bring people together. At the same time, he has a very critical lens through which he looks at our history as Americans and as world citizens. Pulling all those things together in the practice of an American artist is really important for someone who’s going to represent us on a world stage.”

Born in Colorado and based in New York, Gibson, 51, focuses on making work that fuses together American, Native American and queer perspectives. In a 2019 interview with Here and Now, Gibson said the art world hasn’t traditionally valued Indigenous histories and artistic representations.

“There’s this gap historically about these histories existing on the same level and being valued culturally,” Gibson said. “My goal is to force them into the contemporary cannon of what’s considered important.”

A MacArthur “Genius” Grant winner, Gibson has had his work widely exhibited around the country. Major solo exhibitions include one at the Portland Art Museum last year and, in 2013, at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. His work is in the collections of high-profile institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art. Gibson participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

“Having an Indigenous artist represent the United States at the Venice Biennale is a long overdue and very powerful moment,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Director Christopher Bedford said in an email to NPR. “Centering the perspectives of contemporary indigenous artists is a critical component of fostering inclusivity and equity in museums, and in our world.”

The details of Gibson’s contribution for the 2024 Biennale are mostly under wraps. Curator Ash-Milby said the artist is working on a multimedia installation with the title “the space in which to place me” — a reference to a poem by the Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier.

According to the organizers of the U.S. Pavilion, the upcoming Biennale will enable international audiences to have the first major opportunity to experience Gibson’s work outside of the U.S. It will be on view April 20 through Nov. 24, 2024.

The El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) invites the community to the opening of a new exhibit, Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. TODAY, July 28.

“Exposure” is an exhibition of contemporary art that documents responses from international Indigenous artists to the impacts of nuclear testing and accidents, and uranium mining on Native peoples and the environment.

The traveling exhibition gives a voice for artists to address the long-term effects of these man-made disasters on Indigenous communities in the United States and around the world.

“The El Paso Museum of Art is committed to presenting authentic cultural expressions from diverse communities,” said El Paso Museum of Art Director Edward Hayes Jr. “We are proud to host “Exposure,” an exhibition that speaks to the power of collective reflection and healing through art from across three continents, including neighboring indigenous communities in the Southwest U.S.”

Indigenous artists from Australia, Canada, Greenland, Japan, Pacific Islands, and the United States utilize tribal knowledge, traditions and contemporary art forms to inform their thought-provoking artworks that are highlighted in the exhibit.

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology is organized by The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Ford Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and by Air Tahiti Nui. Additional support is provided by the Mellon Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, El Paso Museum of Art Foundation, and the El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs Department.

For more information on the El Paso Museum of Art, including programs and activities and an upcoming member’s only collaboration with the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, visit www.epma.art.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Are you Team Barbie? Team Oppenheimer? Or Team Allan? I’m going with Allan, who is definitely the popular choice. I’m Carolina A. Miranda, art and design columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and I’m ready to beach and fill you in on the week’s essential arts news.

Boricua artists represent

Over the last year, as I’ve worked to complete a monograph on Nuyorican painter Juan Sánchez (almost there!), I’ve had the opportunity to dive into Puerto Rican history (art historical and otherwise) and into the particulars of artistic movements that have emerged from the island as well as the expansive diaspora now based in the United States. (Puerto Ricans in the U.S. have outnumbered those on the island since 2006.)

Despite the presence, the Puerto Rican experience has remained underrepresented in major arts institutions in the U.S. When the group exhibition “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” opened at the Whitney Museum in November, New York Times critic Holland Cotter noted in his review that it was the first major survey of Puerto Rican art in a major U.S. museum in almost half a century.

Miguel Luciano’s “Shields/Escudos” (2020), on view at the Whitney Museum earlier this year.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

This singular absence speaks to the greater historical absence of Latinos in major U.S. cultural institutions. It also reflects the unique dilemma of Puerto Rican culture: Among the global intelligentsia, the U.S. colony is often regarded as not quite the U.S., not quite Latin America.

The ongoing exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” currently on view at LACMA, provides a good example of how Puerto Rico is overlooked in sweeping exhibitions that purportedly cover the breadth of the continent. The show, which explores the connections between Africa and the Americas as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, features not a single Puerto Rican artist.

This is curious, given the abundance of iconic Puerto Rican artworks centered on Black life — such as Francisco Oller‘s “El Velorio,” from 1893, which depicts a baquiné, a wake held to mark the death of a child in the Afro Boricua tradition. Absent from sections that touched on civil rights were the Young Lords, the militant Puerto Rican civil rights group that emerged in Chicago in the late 1960s and later became prominent in New York (having an important influence on culture there). Also absent: any depiction of Pedro Albizu Campos, the mixed-race Puerto Rican independence leader who materializes regularly in art.

The traveling exhibition was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Museu de Arte de Sāo Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The National Gallery’s installation did include a sculpture by Puerto Rican artist Daniel Lind-Ramos (more on him in a bit), but he doesn’t figure in the show’s catalog.

The absence is glaring.

Works by Daniel Lind-Ramos, left, and Juan Sánchez, the painting at right, at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in San Juan.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

Thankfully, this year, “Afro Atlantic Histories” was more the exception than the rule. The Whitney’s group exhibition was critical in bringing visibility to Puerto Rican artists, as was another important group show, “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s to today,” which was on view at the MCA Chicago this past spring — and will land at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego next year. (I wrote all about these exhibitions for the New York Review of Books earlier this month.)

Next month, the MCA Chicago will open another survey focused specifically on Puerto Rican artists called “entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico,” and currently the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City has a solo show by installation artist Pepón Osorio. It joins an ongoing solo show by Lind-Ramos at MoMA PS1 that features almost a dozen of the totemic assemblages for which he has become known. These employ a variety of found materials — pieces of vegetation, musical instruments, old FEMA tarps, scraps of rope and various bits of industrial detritus — to create pieces that evoke spiritual deities and reference the island’s colonial histories. The New York Times’ Cotter described it in his review as “a fantastic terrestrial and celestial mystery tour of an exhibition.”

Daniel Lind-Ramos’ “María de los Sustentos” (2021) at MoMA PS1.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

I caught the exhibition when I was trotting through New York early last month, and it is powerful. Lind-Ramos is a master of material, transforming old tarps into water and figures that feel like apparitions of the Virgin Mary; he is also a master of critique, taking jabs at colonial power in Spain and the U.S. But his figures also resonate with the history and culture of his native Loiza, a town that was originally settled by free Blacks. His work stands in acknowledgment of vital tradition.

The show is on view through Sept. 4. If you happen to be in New York, do not miss it. If you aren’t going to be in New York any time soon, check out the recent episode of Art21 devoted to his work. It is illuminating.

In the galleries

Virtual reality, notes art critic Christopher Knight, can often feel like a stunt in the context of an art exhibition. But it’s put to smart use in a new multilayered installation by Glenn Kaino called “Aki’s Market” at the Japanese American National Museum. The project is inspired by a market run by the artist’s grandfather in East L.A. in the 1950s and ’60s that Kaino has reconstructed — based entirely on family lore — in various media. “Marvelously orchestrated, the work evolves from an anonymous abstraction into an increasingly personal narrative,” writes Knight. “A viewer’s engagement is surreptitiously enticed.”

At Gagosian in Beverly Hills, a new project by Urs Fischer may look like an ad, but it isn’t. On a 12-foot cube wrapped in video screens, the artist is presenting a fever dream of advertisements from 1950 to the present that have been sorted, combined and reinterpreted using artificial intelligence — a way of exploring how images are used to move merch. “It’s a strange thing,” Fischer tells The Times’ Steven Vargas, “that advertisements are so omnipresent and it’s so influential for all of us.”

Urs Fischer’s “Denominator” reimagines advertising using AI.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Since we’re on the subject of Gagosian … the profile of Larry “GoGo” Gagosian by Patrick Radden Keefe in the New Yorker has been the chatter of social media: the meteoric rise, the allegations of dining and dashing in his early days (which he denies), the allegations of dirty phone calls as a young man (also denied), the construction of value, the fact that he doesn’t like to sell to museums (“then I can’t get them back”) and the wildly unregulated nature of it all. It certainly raises questions: about his carbon footprint (which must be spectacular) and his gallivanting around with Russian oligarchs and Leon Black.

Aaaand since we’re on the subject of Black: The MoMA trustee has been accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in Jeffrey Epstein‘s townhouse in 2002, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week. Black denies the allegations, with his lawyers describing the lawsuit at “frivolous and sanctionable.”

The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott is NOT a fan of Kehinde Wiley‘s show at the De Young in San Francisco. “The completed works offer none of the pleasures and surprises afforded by good painting,” he writes. “Their surfaces are immaculate, flat and utterly dead. It doesn’t matter how close you get.”

And Hyperallergic contributor Matt Stromberg reacts to that Vanity Fair piece that claimed art galleries were reviving a “desolate” stretch of L.A. — a desolate stretch that actually happens to be one of the densest corridors in the city.

On and off the stage

Center Theatre Group has announced its 2023-24 season, and leading the charge will be Michael R. Jackson‘s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play, “A Strange Loop,” about a Black gay man writing a musical about a Black gay man. The lineup also includes a “Funny Girl” revival and “A Christmas Story, the Musical.” Among the other productions is “Hadestown,” which was in L.A. last spring, making a return.

Classical notes

Gustavo Dudamel’s summer run at the Hollywood Bowl ended a week ago, just two weeks after the season kicked off. But while the Summer of ‘Tavo has been short, it has been very busy, reports Times classical music critic Mark Swed. “He conducted three different Bowl programs, with a wide range of music that included everything from John Williams film scores to Broadway show tunes to Verdi’s operatic Requiem,” writes Swed. “He worked with the YOLA National Chamber Orchestra and YOLA National Symphony Orchestra, a workshop for 170 talented music students between the ages of 12 and 18 from around the country. That culminated in a concert in which he not only conducted but also made a surprise appearance joining in the violin section.”

Gustavo Dudamel rehearses with young musicians from around the country participating in the L.A. Phil’s annual YOLA National Program earlier this month.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Moves

Artist Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians who is also of Cherokee descent, will represent the United States at the next Venice Biennale. He is the rare Indigenous artist to do so; in 1932, a small group of Native artists, including Hopi artist Fred Kabotie, presented at the international show.

Amada Cruz has been named the new director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Cruz joins the institution from the Seattle Art Museum, where she had served as director and CEO since 2019.

The Rabkin Foundation announced its art journalism grants for 2023, and among the winners are former L.A. Times scribe and current New York Times contributor Jori Finkel, columnist and author Rebecca Solnit and New York-based writers Maximilíano Durón and Jillian Steinhauer.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announced a gift of the Bernard and Barbro Osher Collection of American Art, which includes 61 artworks by figures such as George O’Keeffe, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and many others. Director Thomas P. Campbell describes the gift as “transformative.”

And the Lucas Museum in Los Angeles has added a study for Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa” — which I’m incredibly excited about because my dad once painted a copy of that work and it hung for decades in my aunt’s dining room in Lima, which is definitely an interesting location for a painting that alludes to cannibalism.

Passages

Sinéad O’Connor, the Irish singer who achieved global fame for her haunting performance of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” followed by notoriety for tearing up the pope’s picture on stage, has died at 56.

Singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor performs in Vancouver in 2020.

(Andrew Chin / Getty Images)

Ales Pushkin, a dissident artist in Belarus who once dumped a pile of manure outside the presidential offices in Minsk in a jab at the country’s authoritarian leader, is dead at 57.

Richard Barancik, the last surviving member of the Monuments Men, an Allied Unit that helped preserve art looted and hidden by the Nazis in the wake of World War II, has died at 98.

Pamela Blair, one of the original performers in “A Chorus Line” on Broadway, is dead at 73.

In the news

— The New York Times reports on the crisis in U.S. theaters. Interviews with 72 top-tier regional companies outside of New York point to a future of 20% fewer productions with “shorter runs, smaller casts and simpler sets.”
— A production of Wagner’s “Parsifal,” led by U.S. director Jay Scheib and incorporating augmented reality glasses for the audience, has led to conflict between the Bayreuth Festival‘s financial and artistic teams.
— My colleague Alejandra Molina interviewed Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, the Puerto Rican poet who will lead the Academy of American Poets.
— President Biden has established a national monument to honor Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
— L.A. is slated to host the 2028 Olympics. According to Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin, it’s looking mighty expensive.
— Lehrer Architects and Kadre Architects have released a free standard ADU plan for L.A. residents.
— Culver City plans to open a “safe sleep” site for unhoused people that features 20 tents.
— I enjoyed this episode of “Our Opinions Are Correct,” about why Ayn Rand is so popular in Silicon Valley.

And last but not least …

Speaking of the tech industry, specifically that Twitter logo rebrand: “While some people are getting X Windows System logo vibes, several designers have detected an uncanny resemblance to the ‘X’ in widely available typefaces, including Monotype’s Special Alphabets 4.”

CHICAGO — The beginning of the pandemic was devasting for the leader of the indie rock band Black Belt Eagle Scout, Katherine Paul. All her tours, including one headlining across North America, were canceled and she feared her ascending music career might be over.

She got a day job at a nonprofit and returned to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s homelands in Western Washington. But as Paul, or KP to her friends, spent time in the cedar forests and walked along the Skagit River, she turned to her guitar to deal with the isolation and stress. Those snippets, recorded on her phone, provided the foundation for what would become songs on her powerful, grunge-soaked new record “The Land, The Water, The Sky.”

“I feel like if the pandemic hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have made this record,” said KP, who writes the songs, sings and plays guitar in the band that was the only Native American artist at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago this month.

“I spent a lot of time outside. I spent a lot more time than normal going on hikes, being part of the land,” she continued. “It’s not like I never do that stuff but it brought me back to a place where this is who I am.”

The new record, which came out in February, helped launch what has probably been the most successful year so far for Black Belt Eagle Scout. The band toured Europe and will go to Australia later this year. Two of her songs, “Soft Stud” from an earlier record and “Salmon Stinta” from her latest, appear this season on the television series “Reservation Dogs.”

Reservation Dogs Music Supervisor Tiffany Anders said she was introduced to the band’s music by the show’s creator, Sterlin Harjo, when they started working on the second season.

“It’s always been important for us on this show to include Native American artists, but beyond representation, Black Belt Eagle Scout’s music is beautiful and emotional, and fits these characters, their world and landscape — and the vibe of the show,’” she said in a statement.

Then there was Pitchfork, a three-day festival that is a significant milestone for indie musicians. The festival is held every year in Chicago’s Union Park and this year’s headliners included Bon Iver, Big Thief and The Smile, which has members of Radiohead.

She admitted stepping on that stage last weekend was nerve-wracking given her high hopes for the show, a feeling compounded by concerns that storms could scuttle their performance. But as she launched into the blistering set of mostly new songs in front of thousands of eager fans, KP found solace in her guitar. She launched several long jams that were punctuated by her twirling her jet-black hair around to the point it obscured her face.

“It was totally a moment,” she said with a laugh.

“I kind of cried after we played because it felt so meaningful,” she added. “Like, I’ve always wanted to play this music festival. I remember trying to play one of the years before the pandemic when I was touring and it didn’t happen. This year, I was just so stoked to play.”

Reaching Pitchfork has been a long journey for the 34-year-old artist, who is a member of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and left her home on the reservation in LaConner, Washington, when she was 17 to attend Lewis & Clark College in Oregon and play rock music.

Growing up on the reservation off the Washington coast on islands in the Salish Sea, she drummed and sang cultural songs. As a teenager, she discovered local Pacific Northwest bands like Mount Eerie and the sounds of the Riot Grrrl movement and played one of her first gigs at a small bar called Department of Safety. She moved to Portland, Oregon, due to its outsized role in the indie scene that featured bands like Sleater-Kinney and quickly immersed herself in the music scene playing drums and guitar.

She joined an all-female outfit whom she met at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland. She went on to play a lot of small, basement shows with bands like Genders — whose wolf tattoo she still has on her left arm.

But she wanted to write her own songs and formed Black Belt Eagle Scout in 2013. Her early music was defined by her ethereal singing about love, friendship and healing — often only accompanied by minimal guitar strumming. But she did rock out on songs like “Soft Stud,” which featured searing solos.

“She is a really an authentic musician and she carries a lot of power on stage with her presence and sound,” Claire Glass, who plays guitar in the band and first saw KP seven years ago.

KP has said her Native American identify has always been present on her records. But her latest music paints a more vivid picture of life on the Swinomish reservation. There are references to chinook salmon, which are traditionally fished, and a powwow dance.

“I started thinking of feeling grateful for the life that I have been given; this place that I’m from; how much the land, the water, the sky means to me — being surrounded by it,” KP said of writing the song ”Don’t Give Up.” “It has so much more meaning because the land, that’s where my people are from.”

Her songs aren’t meant to directly confront issues like the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women or tribes’ forced relocation. It’s not the way she writes songs. Instead, she envisions them connecting with people, drawing more Native Americans to indie rock shows in places like Minneapolis, which has a vibrant Native American community, and inspiring young Native Americans to connect with her after shows.

“Isn’t me like being here existing with my music good enough? Can’t I just be who I am?” she asked, adding she doesn’t need to speak out from stage about these issues because being Native often means she is already wrestling with them. A judge, for example, ruled in March that BNSF Railway intentionally violated the terms of an easement agreement with the tribe by running 100-car trains carrying crude oil over the reservation.

“As a Native person, you know someone who is missing. Your tribe is trying to get your land back. Those are topics that are part of your every day life,” she said. ”I care about those things deeply but there are certain ways in which my music is, maybe not as direct, but it can be healing.”

KP also doesn’t want to be seen just as a rock musician or as a Native artist. “I am a musician who happens to be Native, but I am also a Native musician … I think I am always both,” she said.

Her latest record aims to show that.

“I kind of had in the back of mind, just kept thinking what would Built to Spill do,” KP said of the guitar-heavy, indie-rock band from the Pacific Northwest. “I’ve gone on tour with them and seen their three guitars at one point playing together and how they overlap and all these other things.”

It’s also a more collaborative effort with more musicians playing on the record— a departure for KP, who is accustomed to doing everything herself. A cellist who played with Nirvana, Lori Goldston, is featured on several songs, as are two violinists, as well as a saxophone and mellotron player.

Takiaya Reed, a first-time producer who is also in a doom metal band, described the experience of working on the record as “beautiful and amazing” and said the two bonded over their love of punk. Reid also brought her classical training and love of “heavier sounds” to the studio.

“We approached it fearlessly. It was wonderful to be expansive in terms of sonic possibilities,” she said.

KP also wanted to find a place for her parents, whom she had grown especially close to during the pandemic, to play on the record. She chose the song “Spaces,” which she described as having a “healing vibe.” Her dad, who is one of the main singers at the tribe’s cultural events, embraced the idea of lending his powerful powwow chant to the song. Her mom sang harmonies.

KP said: “It meant the world to me to have my parents sing because it felt like it was full circle in who I am.”

CHICAGO (AP) — The beginning of the pandemic was devasting for the leader of the indie rock band Black Belt Eagle Scout, Katherine Paul. All her tours, including one headlining across North America, were canceled and she feared her ascending music career might be over.

She got a day job at a nonprofit and returned to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s homelands in Western Washington. But as Paul, or KP to her friends, spent time in the cedar forests and walked along the Skagit River, she turned to her guitar to deal with the isolation and stress. Those snippets, recorded on her phone, provided the foundation for what would become songs on her powerful, grunge-soaked new record “The Land, The Water, The Sky.”

“I feel like if the pandemic hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have made this record,” said KP, who writes the songs, sings and plays guitar in the band that was the only Native American artist at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago this month.

“I spent a lot of time outside. I spent a lot more time than normal going on hikes, being part of the land,” she continued. “It’s not like I never do that stuff but it brought me back to a place where this is who I am.”

The new record, which came out in February, helped launch what has probably been the most successful year so far for Black Belt Eagle Scout. The band toured Europe and will go to Australia later this year. Two of her songs, “Soft Stud” from an earlier record and “Salmon Stinta” from her latest, appear this season on the television series “Reservation Dogs.”

Reservation Dogs Music Supervisor Tiffany Anders said she was introduced to the band’s music by the show’s creator, Sterlin Harjo, when they started working on the second season.

“It’s always been important for us on this show to include Native American artists, but beyond representation, Black Belt Eagle Scout’s music is beautiful and emotional, and fits these characters, their world and landscape — and the vibe of the show,’” she said in a statement.

Then there was Pitchfork, a three-day festival that is a significant milestone for indie musicians. The festival is held every year in Chicago’s Union Park and this year’s headliners included Bon Iver, Big Thief and The Smile, which has members of Radiohead.

She admitted stepping on that stage last weekend was nerve-wracking given her high hopes for the show, a feeling compounded by concerns that storms could scuttle their performance. But as she launched into the blistering set of mostly new songs in front of thousands of eager fans, KP found solace in her guitar. She launched several long jams that were punctuated by her twirling her jet-black hair around to the point it obscured her face.

“It was totally a moment,” she said with a laugh.

“I kind of cried after we played because it felt so meaningful,” she added. “Like, I’ve always wanted to play this music festival. I remember trying to play one of the years before the pandemic when I was touring and it didn’t happen. This year, I was just so stoked to play.”

Reaching Pitchfork has been a long journey for the 34-year-old artist, who is a member of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and left her home on the reservation in LaConner, Washington, when she was 17 to attend Lewis & Clark College in Oregon and play rock music.

Growing up on the reservation off the Washington coast on islands in the Salish Sea, she drummed and sang cultural songs. As a teenager, she discovered local Pacific Northwest bands like Mount Eerie and the sounds of the Riot Grrrl movement and played one of her first gigs at a small bar called Department of Safety. She moved to Portland, Oregon, due to its outsized role in the indie scene that featured bands like Sleater-Kinney and quickly immersed herself in the music scene playing drums and guitar.

She joined an all-female outfit whom she met at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland. She went on to play a lot of small, basement shows with bands like Genders — whose wolf tattoo she still has on her left arm.

But she wanted to write her own songs and formed Black Belt Eagle Scout in 2013. Her early music was defined by her ethereal singing about love, friendship and healing — often only accompanied by minimal guitar strumming. But she did rock out on songs like “Soft Stud,” which featured searing solos.

“She is a really an authentic musician and she carries a lot of power on stage with her presence and sound,” Claire Glass, who plays guitar in the band and first saw KP seven years ago.

KP has said her Native American identify has always been present on her records. But her latest music paints a more vivid picture of life on the Swinomish reservation. There are references to chinook salmon, which are traditionally fished, and a powwow dance.

“I started thinking of feeling grateful for the life that I have been given; this place that I’m from; how much the land, the water, the sky means to me — being surrounded by it,” KP said of writing the song ”Don’t Give Up.” “It has so much more meaning because the land, that’s where my people are from.”

Her songs aren’t meant to directly confront issues like the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women or tribes’ forced relocation. It’s not the way she writes songs. Instead, she envisions them connecting with people, drawing more Native Americans to indie rock shows in places like Minneapolis, which has a vibrant Native American community, and inspiring young Native Americans to connect with her after shows.

“Isn’t me like being here existing with my music good enough? Can’t I just be who I am?” she asked, adding she doesn’t need to speak out from stage about these issues because being Native often means she is already wrestling with them. A judge, for example, ruled in March that BNSF Railway intentionally violated the terms of an easement agreement with the tribe by running 100-car trains carrying crude oil over the reservation.

“As a Native person, you know someone who is missing. Your tribe is trying to get your land back. Those are topics that are part of your every day life,” she said. ”I care about those things deeply but there are certain ways in which my music is, maybe not as direct, but it can be healing.”

KP also doesn’t want to be seen just as a rock musician or as a Native artist. “I am a musician who happens to be Native, but I am also a Native musician … I think I am always both,” she said.

Her latest record aims to show that.

“I kind of had in the back of mind, just kept thinking what would Built to Spill do,” KP said of the guitar-heavy, indie-rock band from the Pacific Northwest. “I’ve gone on tour with them and seen their three guitars at one point playing together and how they overlap and all these other things.”

It’s also a more collaborative effort with more musicians playing on the record— a departure for KP, who is accustomed to doing everything herself. A cellist who played with Nirvana, Lori Goldston, is featured on several songs, as are two violinists, as well as a saxophone and mellotron player.

Takiaya Reed, a first-time producer who is also in a doom metal band, described the experience of working on the record as “beautiful and amazing” and said the two bonded over their love of punk. Reid also brought her classical training and love of “heavier sounds” to the studio.

“We approached it fearlessly. It was wonderful to be expansive in terms of sonic possibilities,” she said.

KP also wanted to find a place for her parents, whom she had grown especially close to during the pandemic, to play on the record. She chose the song “Spaces,” which she described as having a “healing vibe.” Her dad, who is one of the main singers at the tribe’s cultural events, embraced the idea of lending his powerful powwow chant to the song. Her mom sang harmonies.

KP said: “It meant the world to me to have my parents sing because it felt like it was full circle in who I am.”

Artist Christopher Santer works on painting the mural on the outside of the flood wall in Point Park Thursday. The mural features the railroad bridge with scenes of Parkersburg between each pier. (Photo by Art Smith)

PARKERSBURG — Artist Christopher Santer has been working six days a week, often more than nine hours a day, on the latest installment of the Parkersburg Floodwall mural — even in 90-plus-degree heat.

“I’ve had to leave a couple times, at least for a few hours,” he said Friday. “Around 2 to 4 (p.m.) is the toughest time. Usually (outside of that) I’m in the shade.”

A Parkersburg native, Santer returned to the area from his home in Minnesota more than a week ago to begin his third summer of work on the mural, which he designed. His goal for the month he’s here is to complete the railroad bridge segment that will frame images of Parkersburg’s history.

“I’m going to try to get the bridge, the sky, the piers, all the framework done,” Santer said.

That will span an additional 215 feet from where he left off last year, with the section that frames his aerial image of Blennerhassett Island, which he also plans to finish this summer.

Artist Chrisopher Santer works on the Parkersburg Floodwall mural in Point Park Thursday. Santer plans to finish the railroad bridge piers that will serve as frames for various historical scenes over the next few weeks. (Photo by Art Smith)

Besides the heat, the glare caused by the direct sunlight at certain times also poses a challenge in terms of visibility.

“When I’ve worked through those, I’ve usually just been rolling some base colors, (not) doing any detail work,” Santer said.

Three other artists will be contributing to the project this summer with their own panels.

Parkersburg South High School art teacher Abbie Burge and Caleigh Griffin, who earned a master of fine arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2019, are working on theirs now using the polytab process, said Edward Escandon, project director for the mural. They will be painted on fabric and installed on the floodwall, like the mural recently placed around the entrance to Point Park on the wall’s other side.

Santer said he is considering that method for one of his future panels, so he can work on the project back in Minnesota.

These railroad piers serve as frames for images by Christopher Santer and other artists on the Parkersburg Floodwall mural. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

Paul Mullins, an art professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who went to college with Santer and has assisted with other portions of the mural, will come to town in mid-August to paint his panel on the wall, Escandon said.

While his work is cut out for him this summer, Santer is already looking ahead to 2024. That’s when the bridge section will be connected to the rolling mountains painted in 2021 and the staff of music depicting the opening notes and words of “Country Roads” will be started on the other side.

“It’s an absolute thrill to be doing this, working on such a scale,” Santer said.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

Work on the Parkersburg Floodwall mural in 2024 will focus on linking the mountains and railroad bridge imagery, as well as starting the musical staff for “Country Roads.” (Photo by Evan Bevins)

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Art Newspaper, an editorial partner of CNN Style.

(CNN) — Jeffrey Gibson, the Colorado-born, New York-based artist who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, will represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale, becoming the first Indigenous artist to have a solo exhibition in the US Pavilion.

Gibson’s work mixes many traditions, combining techniques from Indigenous beading, weaving, metalwork and more with the formal language of hard-edged abstract painting, Pop Art sculpture. It spans media such as sculpture, painting, installation and performance. He is perhaps best known for suspended punching-bag sculptures that incorporate elaborate threads, fringes and beaded text, as well as large-scale paintings that feature stylized text rendered in boldly colorful patterns.

For his exhibition in Venice, Gibson will create installations inside the US Pavilion, on its exterior and in its courtyard, incorporating elements of performance and multimedia in addition to static works. Through partnerships with the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Bard College in upstate New York, the pavilion will also incorporate educational programming.

“The last 15 years of my career have been about turning inward and trying to make something I really wanted to see in the world,” Gibson, reflecting on his selection for the Biennale, told The New York Times. “Now I want to expand the way people think about Indigeneity.”

Gibson’s presentation in Venice is being co-commissioned by Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo Nation), curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon; Louis Grachos, executive director of the contemporary art museum SITE Santa Fe; and independent curator Abigail Winograd.

“Throughout his career, Jeffrey has challenged us to look at the world differently through his innovative and vibrant work,” Ash-Milby — who is also the first Native American co-curator in the 129-year history of the US Pavilion in Venice — said in a statement. “His inclusive and collaborative approach is a powerful commentary on the influence and persistence of Native American cultures within the United States and globally, making him the ideal representative for the United States at this moment.”

“I have long believed in the ability of Jeffrey’s work to be a force for positive change and to create the possibility of a radically inclusive future,” Winograd added in a statement. “It is my hope that as a global audience experiences his work through the Biennale, they will also find it to be a source of joy and healing, something sorely needed in a world driven by conflict and crisis.”

As is customary, in addition to the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon and SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, the US Pavilion is being organized in cooperation with the US State Department.

Gibson’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the US over the past decade, including in major solo exhibitions at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art in 2013 and the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 2018. His work figured prominently in the 2017 Desert X Biennial and the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Last May, the National Gallery of Art acquired a major piece from Gibson’s “Garment” series, a work that incorporates elements of Native American regalia as well as references to the late performance artist Leigh Bowery; he is also represented in the collections of many major US museums including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Seattle Art Museum and SFMoMa, among others.

The US was most recently represented in Venice by Simone Leigh. Her 2022 presentation, “Sovereignty,” featured large-scale sculptures which “(interrogated) the extraction of images and objects from across the African diaspora and their circulation as souvenirs in service of colonial narratives,” the exhibition brochure explained.