About the Exhibition
Sunday, February 13, 2022 | 10–10:30am
ADMISSION: This online program is free
This February, fall in love with a remarkable story of romance, resistance, and art. Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore defined the bohemian spirit of 1920s Paris. Surrealist artists who explored gender identity and the subconscious mind—while holding their lifelong love affair secret—they left Paris in 1937 for the soon-to-be Nazi occupied Isle of Jersey, where they used art as their weapon of resistance.
Taking the work of French Jewish artist and writer Claude Cahun (1894–1954) and her lifelong lover and collaborator Marcel Moore (1892–1972) as its starting point, Show Me as I Want to Be Seen examined the complex and empowered representation of a fluid identity. This exhibition positioned their work in dialogue with ten contemporary artists whose artworks—in mediums ranging from painting and sculpture to video and 3-D mapping—and also addressed the opaque, constructed, and shifting self. The contemporary artists in the exhibition were Nicole Eisenman, Rhonda Holberton, Hiwa K, Young Joon Kwak, Zanele Muholi, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Gabby Rosenberg, Tschabalala Self, Davina Semo, and Isabel Yellin.
Header image: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore at the launch of Cahun’s book Aveux non Avenus, photographer unknown, France, 1930. Jersey Heritage Collection.
Exhibition image: Tschabalala Self, Perched, 2016. Oil, acrylic, flashe, handmade paper, fabric, and found material. Courtesy of the artist and Kate Werble Gallery, New York. Photo: Elizabeth Bernstein.