Alumnus Jackson Polys ‘15 in the New Red Order’s exhibition Crimes Against Reality at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Curated by Pat Elifritz, Crimes Against Reality is NRO’s first solo museum exhibition.

Alumnus Jackson Polys ‘15 in the New Red Order’s exhibition Crimes Against Reality at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Curated by Pat Elifritz, Crimes Against Reality is NRO’s first solo museum exhibition. 

This is the latest installment in MOCAD’s Unboxing series, an ongoing slate of exhibitions, performances, and public programs “dedicated to emerging ideas at the crossroads of technology and contemporary art,” as stated in the press release. The exhibition spans two galleries and includes new video commissions that explore experimental media and emerging technologies through an Indigenous lens by way of interdisciplinary artistic collaboration. 

The exhibition offers a forum for the public to engage with New Red Order’s urgent and activating work. The work of NRO and this exhibition has been instrumental in setting forth institutional change, especially at MOCAD. The Board at MOCAD works to instantiate and cultivate meaningful institutional support for Indigenous people.

Jackson Polys is a multi-disciplinary artist belonging to Tlingit territory, living and working between what are currently called Alaska and New York, who examines negotiations toward the limits and viability of desires for Indigenous growth. He holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and was the recipient of a 2017 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Mentor Artist Fellowship. He was advisor and co-organizer for Indigenous New York, the collaborative program initiative co-founded by Mohawk artist Alan Michelson and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. He is a principal contributor to the New Red Order (NRO).  

Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Polys are The New Red Order (NRO), a public secret society whose members collaborate with self-described informants to create videos and performances that function as a radical “calling out [and] calling in.”

New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality is open to the public for free from October 1, 2020 – January 10, 2021 at MOCAD.