Jeffrey Gibson, whose beaded painting Born to Be Alive (2023) appears on the cover of Art in America’s Summer 2024 “Icons” issue, is the subject of a profile in the magazine. From his studio in Hudson, New York, Gibson told A.i.A. the backstory of the cover image, a detail of a larger work shown here in full.
As told to A.i.A. I was listening to music hunting for words to use in my work and came across this disco song, “Born to Be Alive,” by Patrick Hernandez from 1978. As a mix of different kinds of musics—and a place for LGBTQIA2S+ histories—disco was so divisive at the time. People were burning disco records with the same kind of agenda behind books being banned now. The lyrics to this song are explicitly about not only demanding to be able to be alive but also total self-affirmation that says, “I am supposed to exist.” This was a time when Latino, Black, and white people, primarily, were coming together to make a new sound and a new environment that allowed LGBTQIA2S+ communities to come together. This one-hit wonder that some people might dismiss was actually politically provocative in a way that things from a queer aesthetic—like kitsch or camp—are sometimes criticized or invalidated for having too much color.
