Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks

The first retrospective in North America of Gillian Wearing, a seminal British conceptual artist, brings together more than 100 pieces from her earliest Polaroids to her latest self-portraits executed in watercolour, exploring the performative nature of identity. Profoundly empathetic and psychologically intense, her photographs, videos, sculptures, and paintings probe the tensions between self and society in an increasingly media-saturated world.

The title and concept of the exhibition were developed before the COVID pandemic, to explore the performative nature of identity. Wearing’s work has often been anticipatory and prescient of current affairs, coming close to the genres of documentary street photography and performance art. Throughout her works, masks serve as both literal props and metaphors for the performances each of us creates daily as individuals and as citizens.