Welcome to Our new portfolio

Exhibition

Acts of naming are not merely descriptive or representative—they have creative capacity and actively take part in shaping our worlds. As a multi-sited, multidisciplinary exhibition, To Be—Named reflects upon how names are created and used to shape, reshape, and sometimes mis-shape, our worlds, and identities. Artists included in the exhibitions investigate, contend with, and complicate naming practices to reveal ways that personal experiences are either shared or collide with collective ones, creating our political, cultural, and ecological realities.

To date, the curatorial team for To Be—Named led by

(Bard College) and
Gwyneira Isaac
(NMNH, Smithsonian Institution) have finalized seven venues for the traveling portion of the exhibition. This diversity of perspectives has helped us to both trouble and provide meaningful insights into how names and naming practices play out in different contexts—not just as theoretical concepts—but as lived experiences. Each version of the exhibition is designed around a core series of artworks (curated by
Krista Caballero
,
Christian Ayne Crouch
,
Gwyneira Isaac
,
Marta Ostajewska
, and
Bently Spang
) that will travel to the locations listed below, and be put in conversation with regional artworks exploring naming practices within their local contexts. Each venue is also considered an iteration of the previous exhibition, so that selected local artwork may be added to subsequent ones, culminating in the summer of 2024 for a final exhibition in Mexico. 

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