Shifting Landscapes

Through Jan 25

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Rather than accepting the border between the US and Mexico as a fixed and immutable geopolitical line, artists working in the region propose that this part of the American landscape is an herida abierta or open wound—as the Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa described it in her 1987 book Borderlands/La Frontera— where loss and regeneration coexist. Enrique Chagoya, for example, employs a satirical approach in his codices, made in the tradition of ancient Mesoamerican manuscripts, that tell the history of Western civilization from the perspective of the colonized, while Leslie Martinez draws inspiration from the rugged geography of their native south Texas by sewing rags and other recycled materials to their canvases to evoke a landscape marked by pain but also healing. The works gathered here consider political, cultural, and spiritual borderlands as manifestations of a landscape straddling two realities at once, revealing the creative forces that can grow from the grief of historical trauma, erasure, and omission.

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Neon sign with yellow text "LA MIGRACIÓN ES NATURAL" on a black background, framed by a pink border.

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Shifting Landscapes

Borderlands

4

Patrick Martinez Migration Is Natural, 2019, fabricated 2021

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On the Hour

Shifting Landscapes

Borderlands

4

Patrick Martinez Migration Is Natural, 2019, fabricated 2021

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection