[Find the Mercury's Queer Guide in print—available in more than 500 spots citywide!—eds.]

International exhibition the Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious places to present contemporary visual art in the world, and artist Jeffrey Gibson currently represents the US with the space in which to place me.

Gibson’s work fills the US pavilion with dazzling, fluorescent patterns, text that speaks to the history of forced displacement, perpetrated upon Indigenous communities by colonialist settlers, and a massive sculpture of red pedestals that visitors can climb on. There's plenty of Portland connection to Gibson, a queer Choctaw and Cherokee artist whose work They Come From Fire was in a special exhibition at PAM in 2022. 

The inclusion of Portland’s premiere drag clown Carla Rossi, during the Biennale’s opening festivities, added yet another layer. Costumed as video game character Lara Croft, Carla moved around the pedestal with eerie, circular motions reminiscent of idle character animations. The performance worked within Gibson’s exhibition, and also cleverly continued themes found in art made by Carla Rossi’s creator Anthony Hudson, who we often see enmeshing pop culture touchstones with Indigenous artist clapback to great effect.

“I was thinking particularly of the recent frenzy, on the part of museums, to finally close down exhibits and return more of our ancestors and belongings, as part of the updated regulations for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,” Hudson / Rossi later explained to the Mercury. Croft’s fictional identity, as a monied British archeologist, proved a prescient foil. “But also I just really love Tomb Raider,” Hudson / Rossi continued, “and I couldn’t stop myself from spinning the two together. Nor could I help myself from falling [off the sculpture] to my death, but in the end, that was perfectly Lara too.”

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Should you find yourself in Venice, Gibson's exhibition is on display through November.