For the 2025 Genesis Facade Commission, Jeffrey Gibson invites reflection on the interconnected relationships between all living beings and the environment. Drawing from his distinctive style fusing Indigenous worldviews and imagery with abstraction, text, and color, Gibson has created four-large scale figurative sculptures for The Met Fifth Avenue’s exterior.
Titled The Animal That Therefore I Am, the installation transforms the Museum’s neoclassical facade into a dynamic stage for Gibson’s ambitious vision of figural presence and ecological kinship. Each 10-foot bronze sculpture takes the form of a regional animal: a hawk, a squirrel, a coyote, and a deer. Using cast elements such as wood, beads, and cloth to build texture, Gibson embraces a new process that expands his sculptural vocabulary. From these reproduced wood supports emerge referential animal forms, with each sculpture formally fusing the animate and the inanimate. Intricately bold, patinated abstract patterning evokes beadwork and textiles drawn from a range of Indigenous visual languages—motifs that are seamlessly integrated into the sculptures’ surfaces.
The works are inspired by Jacques Derrida’s book The Animal That Therefore I Am, which examines the violence inherent in the human domination of animals—a theme Gibson connects to broader cycles of conflict. By selecting species native to the New York area, he reflects on how these creatures have been forced to adapt to human environments, inviting us to consider what they endure and what they might teach us. Flanking the Museum entrance, the zoomorphic forms remaining in dialogue with the surrounding landscape, from the natural environment of the Hudson River Valley, where Gibson lives and works, to the urban ecology of Central Park encircling The Met.
To learn more about The Genesis Facade Commission: Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal That Therefore I Am at The Met Fifth Ave, click here.
