Shifting Landscapes | Art & Artists

Nov 1, 2024–Jan 25, 2026

Exhibition works

8 total
Borderlands
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Borderlands

Neon sign with yellow text "LA MIGRACIÓN ES NATURAL" on a black background, framed by a pink border.
Neon sign with yellow text "LA MIGRACIÓN ES NATURAL" on a black background, framed by a pink border.

Patrick Martinez, Migration Is Natural, 2019, fabricated 2021. Neon, plexiglass, 25 3/4 × 36 × 4 3/8 in. (65.4 × 91.4 × 11.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2021.126. © 2019 Patrick Martinez

Borderlands

Rather than accepting the border between the US and Mexico as a fixed and immutable geopolitical line, artists working in the region propose that this part of the American landscape is an herida abierta or open wound—as the Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa described it in her 1987 book Borderlands/La Frontera— where loss and regeneration coexist. Enrique Chagoya, for example, employs a satirical approach in his codices, made in the tradition of ancient Mesoamerican manuscripts, that tell the history of Western civilization from the perspective of the colonized, while Leslie Martinez draws inspiration from the rugged geography of their native south Texas by sewing rags and other recycled materials to their canvases to evoke a landscape marked by pain but also healing. The works gathered here consider political, cultural, and spiritual borderlands as manifestations of a landscape straddling two realities at once, revealing the creative forces that can grow from the grief of historical trauma, erasure, and omission.

A person wrapped in a U.S. flag, bound with rope, and wearing a mask with an eagle design, flanked by U.S. and Mexican flags.
A person wrapped in a U.S. flag, bound with rope, and wearing a mask with an eagle design, flanked by U.S. and Mexican flags.

Laura Aguilar, Three Eagles Flying, 1990. Three gelatin silver prints: sheet (a), 23 3/4 × 19 7/8 in. (60.3 × 50.5 cm); sheet (b), 23 7/8 × 19 15/16 in. (60.6 × 50.6 cm); sheet (c), 23 13/16 × 19 7/8 in. (60.5 × 50.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Director's Discretionary Fund 2019.393a-c. © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016

Laura Aguilar
Three Eagles Flying, 1990

Abstract collage with mixed media, featuring photos, fabric, and textured paper. Dominant colors include black, white, yellow, and gray.
Abstract collage with mixed media, featuring photos, fabric, and textured paper. Dominant colors include black, white, yellow, and gray.

Troy Michie, Yo Soy Un Puente Tendido / This Is My Home, 2019. Cut paper, tape, canvas, papier-mâché, towel, cut clothing, ink, graphite pencil, wax crayon, and acrylic on woven magazine pages, 61 1/4 × 52 1/2 in. (155.6 × 133.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Liz and Jonathan Goldman and Robert Lowinger 2021.8. © Troy Michie

Troy Michie
Yo Soy Un Puente Tendido / This Is My Home, 2019

Incorporating a wide range of materials—including found photographs, papier-mâché, and elements of clothing— Troy Michie’s works materialize the ways that historically marginalized communities are often alternately erased and fetishized, made invisible and hypervisible. Yo Soy Un Puente Tendido/This Is My Home includes photography from the pages of vintage pornographic magazines that exclusively featured men of color, collaged by the artist in ways that withhold intimate details. Similarly, by including zoot suit fragments alongside figures whose faces are blank, Michie implies that there is difficulty in preserving one’s visibility against a backdrop of cultural bias. The zoot suit is a flashy, roomy menswear style that was popular in African American communities throughout the 1930s and 1940s as well as in Pachuco lifestyle, the Mexican American youth subculture that originated around that same time in the artist’s hometown of El Paso, which sits along the US-Mexico border. With its layered history, the zoot suit is a reminder of the ways self-fashioning can both advertise and disguise aspects of race, class, and gender.

Learn which materials Michie used to make this work.

A dark landscape with a vivid orange and red glow, resembling a distant fire or sunset against a black sky.
A dark landscape with a vivid orange and red glow, resembling a distant fire or sunset against a black sky.

Teresita Fernández, Fire (America) 3, 2016. Glazed ceramic, 72 × 144 × 1 1/4 in. (182.9 × 365.8 × 3.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2021.19a-c. © Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández
Fire (America) 3, 2016

Vibrant abstract painting with swirling textures and colors, including blue, yellow, pink, and orange, creating a dynamic, energetic composition.
Vibrant abstract painting with swirling textures and colors, including blue, yellow, pink, and orange, creating a dynamic, energetic composition.

Leslie Martinez, A Sublime Concealment of Time, 2023. Paint rags, studio clothes, dried paint chips, charcoal, coarse sawdust, pumice, acrylic on canvas, 60 × 75 × 8 in. (152.4 × 190.5 × 20.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Avo Samuelian and Hector Manuel Gonzalez P.2024.2. © Leslie Martinez. Image courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photograph by Paul Salveson

Leslie Martinez
A Sublime Concealment of Time, 2023

A close-up video still of a man wearing sunglasses.
A close-up video still of a man wearing sunglasses.

James Luna, The History of the Luiseño People, 1993. Video, color, sound; 27:47 min. Image courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org,
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

James Luna
The History of the Luiseño People, 1993

Artists

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