Collection 1980s–Present

206

Illusions of Life

Ongoing

MoMA

Toba Khedoori. Untitled (Doors). 1995. Oil, wax, and pencil on three sheets of paper, 132 × 234" (335.3 × 594.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg. © 2024 Toba Khedoori
  • MoMA, Floor 2, 206 The David Geffen Wing

“There is a mysteriousness and spirituality in the most banal things. So my interest might be to reveal or make a crack in that mundaneness and show a glimpse of the miraculous,” artist Haegue Yang has said. This gallery brings together artworks by Yang and others that reimagine everyday environments through introspective reflection and material restraint. These works evoke spectral architectures, or spaces where what is absent may be as resonant as the visible or tangible.

Created primarily during the 1990s and early 2000s—a period marked by new forms of global interconnectivity that blurred distinctions between public and private spheres—these works focus on the intricacies of daily life as a means to reflect, capture, or magnify experiences of time, space, and the self.

Organized by Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator of Media and Performance, and Lanka Tattersall, Curator of Drawing and Prints, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Curatorial Affairs.

5 works online

Contemporary art at MoMA is presented through a partnership with Richard Mille.

Support for the exhibition is provided by the Annual Exhibition Fund. Leadership contributions to the Annual Exhibition Fund, in support of the Museum’s collection and collection exhibitions, are generously provided by Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, the Sandra and Tony Tamer Exhibition Fund, the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, Alice and Tom Tisch, the Marella and Giovanni Agnelli Fund for Exhibitions, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Eva and Glenn Dubin, Mimi Haas, The David Rockefeller Council, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, Kenneth C. Griffin, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, and Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder. Major funding is provided by The Sundheim Family Foundation.

Installation images

How we identified these works

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected].

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].