THIS BURNING WORLD (2026), adapts stills from Gibson’s 2022 video installation of the same name, originally commissioned by ICA SF and presented at the institution in 2022. Drawing on footage captured in upstate New York and during site visits to California’s Bay Area, Gibson reconfigures stills from the original 60-foot-wide video installation into a tapestry-like field guided by pattern and rhythm. The work registers the precarity of humanity’s relationship to the natural world while insisting on art’s capacity to produce spaces of collective attention, in which reflection, encounter, and civic imagination can take form. The work speaks to the urgency of our collective relationship to the planet while asserting the power of art to foster connection, reflection, and shared civic experience.

“Indigenous kinship philosophies provided the conceptual and philosophical framework for my 2022 presentation at ICA SF, from which this installation finds its foundation. These perspectives acknowledge the elements of our natural environments as our equal ancestors, living relatives, and as extensions of our own minds and bodies. When we damage or treat the land without regard for its own sustainable well being, we are in turn hurting and damaging ourselves and disregarding our own well being, safety, and health.”

— Jeffrey Gibson, Artist