Art from the Ancient Mediterranean, Asia, and Indigenous America all come together in “Being and Believing in the Natural World” up now through May 7th.
Highlighting different perspectives across cultures and time, these works consider complex and evolving relationships with and beliefs about nature. In more than 100 objects drawn from the RISD Museum’s Asian, Native American, and ancient Mediterranean collections, makers from 2000 BCE to the present day explore human relationships with the natural world.
Seen here is a detail from “The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment no. 1” by Jeffrey Gibson of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw/Cherokee in which pieces of birch bark have been arranged to create a 3-d effect. From the wall text:
In this piece, dried gourds, glass beads, and sinew reference powwow regalia, but in a contemporized form and scale. Gibson uses porcupine quills on the sleeves and also incorporates fabric printed with a quill pattern on the ground. The electric palette of neon oranges, yellows, pinks, and greens draws from Gibson’s Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, as well as from 1980s and 1990s Queer culture. The repeated text on the front body of the garment, “Stand Your Ground,” references American state policies that give residents the right to use guns when feeling threatened.
Hours: Tues, Weds, Saturday, Sunday, 10am to 5pm/ Thursday & Friday, noon to 7pm.
Closed Monday.
“Being and Believing” runs through May 7, RISD Museum, 10 North Main Street, (directions)
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