Jeffrey Gibson

Nothing is Eternal

Nothing is Eternal is a newly commissioned video with musical composition. Conceived during this pandemic era, the immersive video work depicts the American flag in unsettling stillness, as a marker of territory, and projected onto bodies, while set to a heartrending soundtrack. At once melancholic and beautiful, Gibson renders the iconic image of the flag as both elastic and unyielding. The slow transformation through time, color, and form reflects both a distillation of our social collapse and the reinvention of self and community, referencing the movement and change that is so desired for this nation.

Nothing is Eternal belongs to no one and everyone... It appears in multiple locations simultaneously or in one for a while. It is, like the rest of us, ungrounded and melancholic and it is, like this time, irresolute. Presented during the 2020 general election, it embodies the contradiction of emotions that pervade our lives, it posits hope as much as it evinces a sense of mourning. Gibson asks viewers to imagine a destiny beyond our comprehension, on a pathway paved with both tremendous love and immense sorrow.