“The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks, the first retrospective of Wearing’s work in North America. Featuring more than a hundred pieces, the exhibition traces the development of the British conceptual artist’s practice from her earliest photographs and videos to her latest paintings and sculptures, all of which explore the performative nature of identity.

Gillian Wearing’s profoundly empathetic and psychologically intense photographs, videos, sculptures, and paintings probe the tensions between self and society in an increasingly media-saturated world. Over her three-decade career, Wearing has focused equally on her own self-portraiture and on the depictions of others, testing the boundaries between the private and public, questioning fixed notions of identity, and frequently anticipating the cultural transformations wrought by social media. Throughout her works, masks serve as both literal props and metaphors for the performances each of us stage every day as individuals and as citizens.” — Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Installation views, Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, November 5, 2021–April 4, 2022. Photos: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2021.

Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks is organized by Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, and Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media, with X Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator, and Ksenia Soboleva, Marica and Jan Vilcek Curatorial Fellow.

Images courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.