Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self – Bulletins

Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, on view by May 10, 2026, explores how pictures has been used all through time as a medium of expression, reinvention, and difficult private id. The largest up to date exhibition on the Gardner Museum thus far, Persona options 83 works by 31 internationally-recognized artists from the Twenties to right this moment. 

In our social media-driven society, self-portraiture is ubiquitous and simply manipulated with filters, AI, and modifying instruments. Persona spotlights up to date work, comparable to Azra Akšamija’s holographic video animation and Cao Fei’s prints of her Second Life alter ego, inspecting the intersection of id and digital tradition and exploring how expertise shapes our understanding of the self, blurring actuality and fiction. 

The exhibition additionally options Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, and others whose pictures and conceptual artwork have lengthy interrogated problems with gender and illustration in movie or the Western creative canon. Their work is juxtaposed with historic references, comparable to Man Ray’s Belle Haleine, that includes Marcel Duchamp as his feminine alter ego, and Claude Cahun’s surrealist, gender-fluid self-portraits. 

Works by Samuel Fosso, Yasumasa Morimura, and Yinka Shonibare reveal how artists can tackle iconic figures or characters so as to handle themes of race, energy, and cultural hybridity. Some artists inhabit a persona as a type of play and discovery, whereas others maintain a mirror as much as the rituals and biases of society. From the theatricality of John Kelly’s invented diva Dagmar Onassis, to Jamie Diamond’s sequence on the fantasy and expectations of motherhood, to Mariko Mori’s critique of the shortage of alternative for ladies in company Japan, the exhibition provides a wealthy and numerous tapestry of voices.

Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self was co-curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art, and Melissa Harris, Editor-at-Large of Aperture Foundation. It contains loans from artists, museums, and galleries, in addition to college and personal collections.

The artists exhibited are: Hakeem Adewumi, Azra Akšamija, Claude Cahun, Sophie Calle, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Cao Fei, Jamie Diamond, John Dugdale, Samuel Fosso, Lina Geoushy, Kahn & Selesnick (Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick), Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, John Kelly, Shigeyuki Kihara, Şükran Moral, Mariko Mori, Yasumasa Morimura, Zanele Muholi, Narcissister, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Tomoko Sawada, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Tseng Kwong Chi, Wang Qingsong, Gillian Wearing, Carrie Mae Weems, and David Wojnarowicz. 

In addition to 4 pictures from her sequence I Promise to be a Good Mother showcased in Persona, Gardner Artist-in-Residence Jamie Diamond was commissioned to create a piece for the Museum’s Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade. On view by July 28, 2026, Monstra Te Esse Matrem (present your self to be a mom) is the newest in Diamond’s ongoing exploration of the persona of ‘mother.’ It options the artist holding a reborn doll, a lifelike silicone surrogate of an toddler, whereas her two kids hug her from behind.

These exhibitions are accompanied by Picturing Isabella within the Museum’s Fenway Gallery, which traces founder Isabella Stewart Gardner’s difficult and evolving relationship to her public persona and legacy.

Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self and Jamie Diamond: Monstra Te Esse Matrem, 2026 are supported partly by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, the Barbara Lee Program Fund, Fredericka and Howard Stevenson, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Picturing Isabella is supported partly by Barbara and Amos Hostetter and Fredericka and Howard Stevenson.

The Artist-in-Residence program is supported partly by Lizbeth and George Krupp and The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Inc., and directed by Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art. Funding can be supplied for site-specific installations of recent work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade on Evans Way.

Learn more about exhibitions on the Gardner Museum.

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