Shifting Landscapes

Nov 1, 2024–Jan 25, 2026

People gazing at a mosaic that looks like land on fire, behind a mossy sculpture on the ground with different shades of green.
People gazing at a mosaic that looks like land on fire, behind a mossy sculpture on the ground with different shades of green.

Installation view of Shifting Landscapes (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 1, 2024-January 2026). From left to right: Teresita Fernández, Fire (America) 3, 2016; Amalia Mesa-Bains, Cihuateotl with Hand Mirror from Venus Envy Chapter III: Cihuatlampa, the Place of the Giant Women, 1997-2022. Photograph by Matthew Carasella

Lea el siguiente texto en español

Aunque la pintura paisajista se ha asociado durante mucho tiempo con vistas pintorescas, Paisajes cambiantes considera una interpretación más amplia de esta categoría, explorando cómo la evolución de los temas políticos, ecológicos y sociales motiva a artistas cuando buscan representar el mundo que les rodea. La exhibición presenta obras de la colección del Whitney que abarcan desde la década de 1960 hasta el presente y está organizada en distintas secciones temáticas. Ciertas obras giran en torno a afinidades materiales y conceptuales: ensamblajes escultóricos construidos con objetos obtenidos localmente, enfoques ecofeministas del arte ambiental, los legados de la fotografía paisajista documental. Otras están vinculadas a geografías específicas, como los frenéticos paisajes urbanos del Nueva York moderno o la escena cinematográfica experimental de Los Ángeles en los años setenta. Algunas, muestran cómo artistas inventan mundos nuevos y fantásticos donde los seres humanos, los animales y la tierra se vuelven uno. Ya sea representando los efectos de la industrialización en el medio ambiente, abordando el impacto de las fronteras geopolíticas o proponiendo espacios imaginados como una forma de desestabilizar el concepto de un mundo “natural”, las obras reunidas aquí se centran en ideas de lugar y territorio, poniendo en primer plano cómo la gente da forma y a la vez es formada por los espacios que nos rodean.

Audio

Chelsey Pellot, Assistant Manager of Foundation & Government Relations, writes about the perfect soundtrack for Shifting Landscapes.

With its themes of cultural resistance, reclamation, and preservation, Bad Bunny’s 2025 album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, is the perfect soundtrack to Shifting Landscapes. Song by song, it directly overlaps with the exhibition’s core issues, offering a unique sonar and visual experience when paired together.  

The album’s opening track, NUEVAYoL, pays homage to New York City’s influence on Puerto Rican culture, a history explored in Shifting Landscapes’s New York Cityscapes section, which features Nuyorican artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Miguel Luciano, Hiram Maristany, Sophie Rivera, and Rigoberto Torres. These artists demonstrate that the influence goes both ways—Puerto Rico has had an immense impact on how we experience the Big Apple or la gran manzana.  

The song LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii draws parallels between Hawai’i and Puerto Rico’s complex relationships to the United States. It provides a somber soundtrack to Piliāmo‘o’s photographs depicting how the multiyear construction of the H-3 Interstate in O‘ahu, initiated by the U.S. government, impacted local communities. 

PERFuMITO NUEVO captures the essence of the other-worldly figure portrayed in Dalton Gata’s painting I Don’t Need You To Be Warm with its ethereal sound and dreamlike lyrics. Wearing a billowing furry coat, shiny black stiletto boots, and a crown of fire atop flowing blond hair, “The figure in Gata’s painting fashions a sense of self-confidence that is alluring,” the exhibition’s curator, Marcela Guerrero, observes. “She might very well be who Bad Bunny is singing about when he says ‘No parece leo ni escorpio; Pa mí que ella tiene su propio signo; Fría, sentimental, está en temporada de portarse mal.’” (“She doesn’t look like a Leo or Scorpio; I think she has her own sign; cold, sentimental, she’s in the season of misbehaving.”)  The exploration of evolving political, ecological, and social issues, and how artists portray the world around them, is the crux of Shifting Landscapes, and mirrors Bad Bunny's similar inspirations and motivations behind his powerful work of art, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Frank WANG Yefeng, The Levitating Perils #2

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.