Before You Now: Jessica Wimbley

Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture focuses on the enduring theme of the artist’s self-portrait. The exhibition, now on view on the Vincent Price Art Museum, presents a number of pictures, prints, drawings, movies, and set up artwork, primarily by up to date makers, drawn from LACMA’s assortment. The over 50 artists featured in Before You Now ponder their physicality in lifelike vogue, spotlight their persona by means of symbolic tropes, or make the most of humor and conceptual strategies to enlighten, exaggerate, or camouflage their reflective selves. All collectively, the work on view is a dynamic introduction to American artists as they see themselves—or as they wish to be seen by the general public.

To accompany Before You Now, LACMA has produced a collection of video portraits introducing just some of the artists and their works. In this video, artist Jessica Wimbley discusses her Cabinet Portrait: Wife Portrait (2022), which mimics the format and pose of a basic Nineteenth-century photographic format generally known as a cupboard card whereas rejecting the usually diminutive six-by-four-inch scale. This form of bridal portrait was key to the success of early studio pictures, and together with her self-portrait, Wimbley has contemporized the follow however actually scaled up the presence of Blackness in American materials tradition, whereas carrying a boldly non-traditional black marriage ceremony costume.

Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture is now on view on the Vincent Price Art Museum by means of August 30, 2025. On Saturday, August 23, Kalli Arte Collective, who can also be featured in Before You Now, will lead a collage workshop and discuss alongside the exhibition. RSVP free.