• MoMA, Floor 2, 208 The David Geffen Wing

“What does my heritage have to do with my art? It is who I am,” Kay WalkingStick declared in 1992. “Art is a portrait of . . . the artist’s thought processes, sense of self, sense of place in the world. If you see art as that, then my identity as an Indian artist is crucial.” During the 1990s, as issues of identity and representation emerged in mainstream discourse under the banner of multiculturalism, many artists resisted interpretations of their work that lacked a nuanced understanding of their race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

For many of the Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and queer artists shown in this gallery, existing outside the bounds of dominant societies became a way to construct new forms of belonging under the weight of exclusionary social systems. Drawing on a diverse range of influences, from civil rights movements to Indigenous spiritual practices, these artists mobilized feelings of loss and otherness to contend with violence—both historical and ongoing—and foreground counternarratives of resistance, care, affinity, and survival.

Organized by Inés Katzenstein, Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, and Roxana Marcoci, The David Dechman Senior Curator, Department of Photography, with Caitlin Ryan, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, Julia Detchon, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance.

13 works online

Artists

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-and-learning/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].