G. Peter Jemison

On the Right Path: Works 1982–2023, presents artworks by G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, Heron Clan) made between 1982 and today. Jemison’s output is wide-ranging, and he is celebrated for his paintings, his collages, and his iconic series of drawings on paper bags, each of which are on view at 47 Canal.

After graduating from art school in 1967, Jemison resided briefly in New York City. Here, he participated in notable group shows including at Tibor de Nagy (1968), “Contemporary Indian Painting” at the Museum of the American Indian (1971) and “Native North American Art,” curated by artist and curator Lloyd Oxendine (Lumbee) at the Brooklyn Museum (1972). After relocating to Buffalo for nearly a decade, in 1978 Jemison came back to the city to curate the American Indian Community House’s gallery. The Community House has supported New York’s Indigenous communities for over half a century, and its gallery, which closed in 2012, gave breakthrough shows to numerous Native artists. The artist continued to devote himself to his studio practice, where he sharpened his eye for the contradictions of metropolitan life.

Jemison moved upstate again in 1985 to manage Ganondagan State Historic Site, a cultural center located at the original site of a 17th century Seneca town. He remained in the role for almost forty years. The move, and his time at Ganondagan, prompted a profound reengagement with the Native community and environment of his ancestral lands.

On the Right Path: Works 1982–2023, exhibits artworks produced during these two periods in Jemison’s career. The artist’s influential oeuvre is defined by its visual clarity and its savvy dismantling of dichotomies such as traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, and autobiographical and political. His practice is guided by orenda, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) understanding of the spiritual force embodied by all living beings and parts of creation.

On the Right Path: Works 1982–2023, is Jemison’s first solo exhibition in New York City since 1974, when he showed at American Art, a gallery founded on Wooster Street in the early 1970s by Oxendine. In September of this year, Jemison presented work in the Focus section of the Armory Show, curated by Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish). Jemison recently participated in the group exhibitions “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces” at the Museum of Modern Art (2022), “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1 (2021), and “Unholding” at Artists Space (2017).