Highlighting selections from the museum’s collection of global contemporary art, Lasting Images includes recently acquired works in a range of mediums—from film to sculpture and installation—that have not yet been exhibited in the United States. The artists featured use subtle, often ephemeral forms to suggest nuanced personal or historical narratives. Many of the artists in the exhibition are originally from countries that have witnessed violence and conflict in recent decades, and yet none of the works can be reduced to simple biographical accounts. Each piece functions as a vehicle for individual expression while resonating with universal themes.
This focused presentation brings together artists with diverse backgrounds and features such evocative work as Doris Salcedo’s A Flor de Piel (2011–12). Composed of hundreds of rose petals that have been painstakingly sewn together by hand, the artist has described the sculpture as a response to victims of torture during the civil war in her native Colombia. Mona Hatoum’s Impenetrable (2009) is a suspended cube made of barbed-wire rods that appears to float in the gallery; its ethereal form belies a foreboding presence. Other artists in the exhibition, including Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, and Simryn Gill, use found images and materials to interweave private and public experience.
—Lauren Hinkson, Assistant Curator, Collections
Mona Hatoum, Impenetrable, 2009. Black finished steel and finished wire, 300 x 300 x 300 cm, edition 3/3. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Collections Council; International Director’s Council; with additional funds from Anne Ames, Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian, and Marcio Fainzilber 2012.10 © Mona Hatoum. Photo: Agostino Osio, Courtesy White Cube and Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice