<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1580481" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Installation-View_The-Genesis-Facade-Commission_Jeffrey-Gibson_The-Animal-That-Therefore-I-Am_2025.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="The front facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with four monumental bronze animal sculptures by Jeffrey Gibson flanking the grand entrance steps” width=”970″ height=”744″ data-caption=”The latest Genesis Facade Commission, “Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal Therefore I Am.””>
Following the explosion of color from his kaleidoscopic takeover of the U.S. Pavilion during the last Venice Biennale, Jeffrey Gibson unveiled his works for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest Genesis Facade Commission last week. Titled “The Animal That Therefore I Am,” Gibson’s intervention features a series of monumental bronze sculptures, marking his first time working with the material at such scale within a public institution and platform.
The title of the installation is highly evocative and symbolic, suggesting a move away from a human-centric worldview toward a more fluid, hybrid identification with other species and the environment. It originates from a series of lectures by French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida that Gibson first encountered in the late 1990s, the artist told Observer after the unveiling. Titled “The Autobiographical Animal,” Derrida’s lecture—originally a ten-hour seminar he delivered in 1997 at the Cerisy conference—was later published in French as L’animal que donc je suis (à suivre) and in English as The Animal That Therefore I Am.
In his lecture, Derrida argued that animals possess a form of subjectivity and autonomous intellect—certainly more than the Western philosophical tradition has typically allowed—and asserts that, “For the most part, the philosophers … have refused the animal all kinds of attributes that one recognizes in oneself, such as the ability to respond, the ability to suffer, the ability to be aware.” For the philosopher, the relational and existential confrontation with an animal’s gaze provokes a fundamental destabilization of the human subject. “I often ask myself, just to see, who I am—and who I am when, caught naked, in silence, by the gaze of an animal, for example, the eyes of a cat, I have trouble, a bad time overcoming my embarrassment.”
For the French philosopher, the animal gaze already reveals an unsettling glimpse into the abyssal boundary of the human—the inhuman or the ahuman, the ends of man. “I have been aware of Indigenous worldviews and kinship philosophies that honor animals, plant life and other living beings for some time,” Gibson explained. “I find that other animal species are rarely acknowledged as having their own independent intellect and autonomous relationship with the larger world.”
For the artist, Derrida’s lectures offered a vital revelation: humans routinely fail to extend equitable respect to other animals. “This lack of respect reflects a loss of empathy, which ultimately allows for an indulgence in violent behavior toward other living beings,” he reflected, echoing Derrida’s argument that denying animals the capacity to respond reveals a broader failure of respect and responsibility in our relationship with life itself.
Rising with an auratic, totemic presence before the Met’s historic facade—rooted in Western ideals of beauty and order, shaped by Classical art and framed by Neoclassicism and Beaux-Arts—Gibson’s sculptures serve as a symbolic call to shift the prevailing paradigm and narrative, challenging the cultural canons embodied by the building itself.
Drawing on the culture, traditions and spirituality of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and his Cherokee heritage, these reimagined monuments summon the power of nature over humans, offering a resonant return to the primordial essence of interconnected existence within a broader, yet increasingly fragile, ecosystem. At the same time, they remain deeply anchored in their immediate context. Gibson pointed out that the animals depicted in the sculptures all live in Central Park—creatures he also encounters in the Hudson Valley. “I began thinking about animals as teachers, or as models for how to engage with the world. These four animals—the hawk, the deer, the squirrel and the coyote—all navigate their ecosystems differently and can offer us, as humans, new approaches to the way in which we navigate our own world.”
Gibson’s commission arrives amid a growing institutional and curatorial interest in Indigenous artistic expression—first across museums and biennials, and increasingly within the market. Adorned with sacred vests and ceremonial ornaments and standing with the dignity and solemnity of long-venerated statues of heroes or deities, his animals simultaneously challenge the anthropocentric thinking that those human figures once embodied. Alternatively, they point toward an animistic awareness and spirituality—foregrounded by many ancient cultures but gradually erased in the course of so-called “civilization.” With their potent symbolic presence, the sculptures emerge as shamanic guides, redirecting humanity’s path toward a more sustainable and harmonious future—reconnecting with nature, the primal source of all things.
“Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal That Therefore I Am” is at the Met through June 9, 2026.
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