Ana Mendieta
in ‘What it Becomes’, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
24 August 2024 – 12 January 2025
Ana Mendieta, ‘Untitled (Silueta Series, Iowa)’, 1979, chromogenic print, 20 × 13 3/16in. (50.8 × 33.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee, 92.113; © Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection
‘What It Becomes’ is an exhibition of new and rarely seen works from the Whitney’s collection that encourage us to think expansively about what drawing is and can be. Featuring the work of eleven artists, including Ana Mendieta, Catherine Opie Darrel Ellis, David Hammons, the exhibition explores how artists have turned to drawing as a way to reveal the unseen and make the familiar unrecognisable.
The exhibition takes its title from the words of artist Toyin Oijh Odutola, who, describing how the act of drawing transforms the source imagery she works from, remarks, ‘What it becomes is what I’m interested in.’ Harnessing drawing’s relationship to touch and its ability to convey change, the artists explore the malleable nature of identity and the possibility of shaping and redefining oneself.