I Refuse to be Invisible: Self-Portraiture Across American Art

I Refuse to be Invisible encompasses a heterogeneous array of works, ranging from oil on canvas to sculpture and video art, and it draws from the collections of Art Bridges, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the National Academy of Design. The exhibition broadens the definition of “American art” by pairing household names, such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, with artists like Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith and Ana Mendieta, both “outsiders” who have only recently been acknowledged by canonical art history. The exhibition offers a crash course in self-portraiture as well as works that seek to challenge the tenets of the genre. While some of the works in the show rely on likeness and are instantly recognizable as a self-portrait, others reimagine identity through forms of representation that do not rely on similitude and may not feature an identifiable human figure. The latter deliberately challenges the conventions of self-portraiture by exploring how language, visual association, and symbols can depict aspects of selfhood that would otherwise remain invisible.