This week, we got the chance to explore the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and it did not disappoint! The biennial is an iconic annual showcase of contemporary art that offers a fascinating glimpse into the ever-evolving creative landscape of the United States. Featuring 56 artists from diverse backgrounds and generations, including 92 year old Puerto-Rican born Carmer De Monteflores and her daughter, Andrea Fraser, as well as Native American Artist, Kimowan Metchewais, the exhibition challenges us to rethink what it really means to call something “American.” Through a range of mediums, the artists tell stories of resilience and inclusion, drawing our attention to topics including indigenous autonomy, queer and trans rights, and climate disaster. Together, their work invites viewers to confront uncomfortable histories while imagining a more expansive and equitable vision of American identity. While we are only able to share a small taste of what’s on display this is one exhibition you don’t want to miss. If you get the chance, go see it for yourself!

Every two years, the Whitney Museum holds an exhibition that is regarded as one of the most important and influential events in contemporary art. Some version of this exhibition, the Whitney Biennial, has been in existence since 1932, making it the longest-running survey of American art. Delayed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s biennial is a “startlingly coherent and bold” forum for artists’ musings on the events, changes, and trials of last three years. There is a wide variety of perspectives and mediums, from more traditional painting, sculpture, and photography to experimentations with performance, video, light, chemicals, makeup and prosthetics, textiles, and technology. The artworks tackle a wide range of themes, including racial justice, class discrepancy, capitalism, corporatism, imperialism and the effects of colonialist action, the American prison system, indigenous issues, and the widespread grief of a global pandemic. An exhibition this far-reaching and ambitious could easily feel disjointed and chaotic, but instead it encourages the viewer to understand that the issues and conditions addressed by the art “are not new, their overlap, their intensity, and their sheer ubiquity created a context in which past, present, and future folded into one another.” The curators “organized this Biennial to reflect these precarious and improvised times.”