Portraiture Now: Staging the Self
The Americas Society, New York, NY | June 10–October 17, 2015
Curated by Taína Caragol, Rebecca Kasemeyer, Dorothy Moss, and David C. Ward.
The National Portrait Gallery presents at the Americas Society Portraiture Now: Staging the Self, one in a series of exhibitions that showcase some of the most creative twenty-first-century portrait artists.
Portraiture Now: Staging the Self features the work of six contemporary U.S. Latino artists—David Antonio Cruz, Carlee Fernandez, María Martínez-Cañas, Rachelle Mozman, Karen Miranda Rivadeneira, and Michael Vasquez—who present identities theatrically, in order to rid portraiture of its reassuring tradition that fixes a person in space and time.
Through their works these artists address personal or family issues, telling stories that they remember or imagine from their past, manipulating images of themselves, or superimposing portraits of their loved ones on their own. Like actors searching for a character, they explore the boundaries of individuality. In the process, portraiture loses its aura of certainty and instead becomes an evolving map for finding oneself and others.
Interview with artist Rachelle Mozman, her works are part of our exhibition "Portraiture Now: Staging the Self" on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery from August 22, 2014 through April 12, 2015 ( http://npg.si.edu/exhibit/staging/ ).