LONDON.- This exhibition of photographic portraits by American artist Catherine Opie will be the first major museum exhibition of her work to be shown in the UK. Exploring themes of social, political and individual identity, through studio portraiture, environmental studies and documentary images, Catherine Opie: To Be Seen will bring together over 80 photographs spanning 30 years of Opie’s groundbreaking career, including her first major work, Being and Having (1991), ennobling portraits of LGBTQ+ friends inspired by court painter Hans Holbein and Baroque-like portraits of artists.

One of the most influential artists of our time, Opie’s work is driven by the urgency to chronicle the ebb and flow of human culture. Her wide-ranging oeuvre features projects ranging from documenting Queer communities in Los Angeles, to analyses of the Catholic Church, to abstract landscapes.

At the basis of her practice is her ongoing questioning of evolving ideas of community, identity and belonging. For Opie, portraiture is a radical act of representation – a desire to make the invisible visible and a gesture of belonging and resistance. Grounded in the documentary tradition, her work continually eschews sensationalism, instead attempting to build nuanced pictures of civic life. For all their conceptual rigour and formalism, Opie’s photographs convey a sense of a shared humanity and beauty.

Through careful curation Opie explores the function of a National Portrait Gallery, its influence on those who visit and our relationship with national identity. Designed by architect Katy Barkan, the exhibition space will consist of three rooms that create a dialogue with the permanent galleries. The first room, a perfect square, will hold the first exhibited portraits by and of the artist, including Being and Having (1991), comprised of 13 portraits of Opie as ‘Bo’ and her leather dyke community enacting their moustachioed masculine alter-egos. The second room, purposefully colliding with the existing Gallery wall, narrates a series of portraits and landscapes inspired by art history. The third space frames figures drawn from Opie’s series’ High School Football (2007-09) and Surfers (2003), exploring themes of constructed community and masculinity with the works crowded at the back of the Gallery space. Alongside the exhibition, there are a number of decisive interventions within seven Collection galleries.

Opie’s artistic practice attests to her great sense of humanity and care whether as a university professor, a mother, a member of the queer community, an American or a world citizen. Her portraits of fellow artists, friends, children and protestors draw attention to the power of visibility. From photographs covering Barack Obama’s Inauguration, Tea Party rallies, and LGBTQ+ rights protests, to tender family moments and vulnerable self-portraits, Opie’s photographs collapse divisions between the personal and the political. Catherine Opie: To Be Seen will see Opie’s portraits work in dialogue with one another to create new narratives, challenging viewers to reflect on the figures most commonly portrayed in art and those who go unseen.