HALEY CLOUSER
CURATOR | WRITER

In Spite of Modernism: Contemporary Art, Abstract Legacies, and Identity 


In Spite of Modernism: Contemporary Art, Abstract Legacies, and Identity features five contemporary artists who challenge abstract styles narrowly associated with Modernism in order to confront the movement’s racial and gendered exclusions. It not only highlights the under-acknowledged, diverse narratives present throughout the historic Modern movement, but also the abundance of pre-existing abstract legacies despite Modernism’s authority over certain styles.

Applying approaches stemming from global visual languages, such as geometric abstraction and minimalistic compositions, artists like Paolo Arao, Julia Kwon, Esteban Ramón Pérez, among others, offer a reframing and inclusive reading to what Western Modern artists have conventionally received claim to fame. Their works, ranging from Perez’s large color-block leather textiles to Tariku Shiferaw’s paintings of rectangular forms - styles that would be reductively considered “Modernist” - recall the origins of abstract designs from Xicano to African American communities, as well as from Korean to Filipino cultures. By comparison, exhibiting artists, like Arao and Kwon, also challenge the limited readings of Modernism that have neglected the complexities of femininity and queer sexuality. Paying tribute to the remarkable resilience of the various peoples behind iconic abstract styles, the artists’ works keenly remind us that we must not merely ensure more inclusive readings of history and its art and artists, but to also empower the living beings behind these visual legacies.

In Spite of Modernism is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue.  Museum of Contemporary Art, Arlington
Arlington, VA
01/29/2022 - 03/19/2022

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