Jackson Polys

Jackson Polys (born 1976 in Ketchikan, Alaska) is a Tlingit Native visual artist and filmmaker whose work is based between Alaska and New York. His work examines the constraints and potential in the desire for Indigenous advancement, while challenging existing gazes onto traditional Native culture. Polys is well known for his films, institutional critique, and carved sculptures incorporating materials such as abalone, glass, liquids, resins, silicone, as well as the ready-made. Early life and education Polys was born in the Tlingit territory located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States near the border of British Canada. At the early age of three, Polys began carving with his father Nathan Jackson (artist). He was adopted into the Dakl’aweidí Clan of the Jilkáat Kwáan and worked as a visual artist with the names of Stephen Paul Jackson and Stron Softi. During this time Polys began to carve large-scale totemic sculptures. Polys received his BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Columbia University (2013), and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2015). He is the recipient of a 2017 Native Arts and Culture Foundation (NACF) Mentor Artist Fellowship, and Advisor to Indigenous New York. Art Jackson Polys' artistic practice explores the history, historiography, and contemporary experience of native peoples. Polys practices wood carving from his traditional training with his father Nathan Jackson (artist), integrating research into traditional native-American carving techniques. In "Manifest X," a collaboration with Robert Mills, the two artists created sculptures that Tlingit visual traditions while revealing the expansive potential for self expression through these forms. This project, among others, seeks to correct the treatment of native artifacts and objects by institutions such as museums.