Human beings are boundless. We can unravel ourselves along various threads of identity— gender, ethnicity, class, etc.—but there are always more. The sum of who we are as individuals is both greater and more complex than a limited litany of categorizable experiences. This nuanced experience of existing within a body has inspired artists for centuries, and continues to drive new visual languages.

Spanning artists identified with Bay Area Figuration of the 1960s to the present, Our whole, unruly selves explores the changing stakes of figurative representation in contemporary art. The exhibition springs from the holdings of SJMA’s permanent collection, augmented by borrowed artwork, to encompass a wide variety of perspectives and artistic strategies. Artistic figuration can be representational, referring to specific human bodies and experiences, or more abstract, approaching the human form as an emotive container or structure for aesthetic inquiry. This exhibition highlights work that resists the foreclosure of the fixed, direct portrayal of traditional portraiture. Many of the figures in Our whole, unruly selves are abstracted or blurred, bodies visible and eclipsed, that insist on how much the viewer will never see or know about the pictured subject.

Adopting approaches aligned with philosopher and poet Fred Moten’s stated direction to “consent not to be a single being,” these shapeshifters both claim and reject identities. Many of the artists whose work is included this exhibition identify as queer, Black, undocumented, large- bodied, brown, immigrant, and disabled, terms that denote a perceived difference. In interrupting traditional portraiture with unconventional depictions and material incongruities, artists are making viewers aware of their own expectations of legibility, and challenging the viewer’s desire for classification. In thinking beyond diversity, these artists are approaching the body through a conceptual lens that acknowledges the legacy of white supremacy is always present in viewing strategies.

Through aesthetic transgressions that both resist and exceed traditional forms of figuration, these painted, sculpted and drawn forms offer a variety of forms of resistance. Wardell Milan collages figures using fragmented photographs of Black men, etching and ink, to fabricate materially hybrid bodies that both contain and exceed individualities. Rina Banerjee utilizes fashion and material culture to reframe diasporic statelessness as a form of belonging based on shared affinity and experience rather than nationality. Felipe Baeza and Senga Nengudi explore suspension and gravity through evocative materiality, bodies edging towards abstraction in release and exhaustion. Some bodies are represented as polymorphous, with multiple faces or limbs, androgynous or multi-sexed, hybrid across time and species. Using materials and technique, several exhibiting artists challenge notions of individuality. Laura Aguilar, for example, photographs her body blending within her ecological surroundings, suggesting a porosity between human and non-human, self and other, to create an altogether different topography framed by mutual support and connectedness. Hayv Kahraman paints women’s bodies, contorted by assimilation but entwined with each other in geometric beauty, an incomplete personhood reframed as collective possibility.

As part of the exhibition, artist Aislinn Thomas will collaborate with intergenerational contributors from San Jose’s Latinx theater company, Teatro Vision, to create a sound artwork of experimental visual descriptions for select artworks on view in the exhibition. For the project participants imbue artwork with a first-person voice, imagining the painted or sculpted figure as a being with its own thoughts, experiences and desires. The project is guided by thinking around disability justice, which embraces more imaginative possibilities for inclusivity beyond simple compliance in providing access for low vision individuals.

Artwork in Our whole, unruly selves embodies the complex ways in which our private and public identities interact with each other, shaping our experiences as individuals, in communities, and as a species. This exhibition brings together a gathering of bodies, who through resonance and tension, contribute to the ongoing project of knowing ourselves and others.

A partial list of artists in the exhibition includes: Hayv Kahraman, Woody De Othello, Benny Andrews, Ruth Bernhard, Senga Nengudi, Huma Bhabha, Steffani Jemison, Miljohn Ruperto, Carlee Fernandez, Tim Hawkinson, Christina Quarles, Rina Banerjee, Felipe Baeza, Laura Aguliar, Wardell Milan, Genevieve Gaignard, Axis Dance Company, Aislinn Thomas, Kambui Olujimi, P. H. Polk, Willie Birch, Alison Saar, Nathan Oliveira. Robert Arneson, Harold Edgerton, Benny Andrews, Frank Lobdell ,Woody de Othello, Hayv Kahraman, Oliver Lee Jackson, Andre Kertesz, Frank Lobdell, Eric Fischl, Kenyatta Hinckle, Manual Neri, Gauri Gill, John O'Reilly, and others.

Click on the links provided to go to our Permanent Collection pages for the artist.

Organized by Lauren Schell Dickens, senior curator