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. During this time Polys began to carve large-scale totemic sculptures. He is the recipient of a 2017 Native Arts and Culture Foundation (NACF) Mentor Artist Fellowship, and Advisor to Indigenous New York.

Jackson Polys taught at Columbia from 2016 to 2017, and was an advisor to Indigenous New York with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

In 2022, Sealaska Heritage Institute invited carvers to create kootéeyaa (totem poles) for the Totem Pole Trail in Juneau, Alaska. Polys and his father, Nathan Jackson, will carve two poles.

Polys has also worked under the names Stephen Paul Jackson and Stron Softi.

Selected exhibitions, performances, and screenings

Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 2019. The Crybabies, Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK, 2019. Native Perspectives, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 2018. Sealaska Heritage Institute, Juneau, AK, 2018. Unholding, Artists Space, New York, NY, 2018. The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets, Sundance Film Festival, 2018. Manifest X, Main Street Gallery, Ketchikan, AK, 2018. My First 3D Part III: The Final Chapter, Microscope Gallery, New York, NY, 2017.