BOSTON, MASS.- A suite of exhibitions at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum explores how photography has been used throughout time as a medium of self-expression and reinvention, a means for questioning and challenging personal identity. Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self (February 19 – May 10) examines how artists, both historic and contemporary, have utilized photography to create and share a persona, an alter ego that is distinct from the self they present to the public. Picturing Isabella (February 19 – June 21) investigates the deliberate curation of an enigmatic and elusive identity by Museum founder Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840 – 1924), who hid from the camera as her fame grew. A newly-commissioned public work of art by Gardner Museum Artist-in-Residence, Jamie Diamond: Monstra Te Esse Matrem (show yourself to be a mother), 2026 (February 10 – July 28), confronts preconceived notions of motherhood. In all of these exhibitions, photography is revealed as a critical tool in presenting one’s persona, real or imagined—a theme of particular relevance in today’s social media-driven society.
“Photography can provide a creative avenue for cultivating and even reinventing one’s own identity,” said Peggy Fogelman, Norma Jean Calderwood Director. “Artists have used its power to project a certain image, or persona, and posit an alternate or imagined reality, from the time of Isabella Stewart Gardner, who fiercely protected her own unique identity, to the current era of digital editing and AI.”
Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self
February 19 – May 10, Hostetter Gallery
Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self, on view from February 19 – May 10, features 83 works by 31 internationally-recognized artists who have imagined and re imagined themselves and others through unique personas, alter egos, and avatars. Whether aspirational, related to cultural or social identity, or a form of activism and advocacy, inhabiting a character enables artists to empower themselves and interrogate societal norms, expectations, and stereotypes. Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self, which takes place in the Museum’s Hostetter Gallery, is co curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, the Gardner’s Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art, and Melissa Harris, editor-at-large of Aperture Foundation. The exhibition includes generous loans from artists, museums, and galleries, as well as university and private collections.
Photographs chosen for the exhibition represent a wide range of artists who confront the complex nature of identity in a myriad of different ways. They are: Hakeem Adewumi (American, b. 1990); Azra Akšamija (Austrian, b. 1976); Claude Cahun (French, 1894 – 1954); Sophie Calle (French, b. 1953); María Magdalena Campos Pons (Cuban American, b. 1959); Cao Fei (Chinese, b. 1978); Jamie Diamond (American, b. 1983); Marcel Duchamp (French American, 1887 – 1968); John Dugdale (American, b. 1960); Samuel Fosso (Cameroonian, b. 1962); Lina Geoushy (Egyptian, b. 1990); Kahn & Selesnick (Nicholas Kahn [American, b. 1964] and Richard Selesnick [British, b. 1964]); Mary Reid Kelley (American, b. 1979) and Patrick Kelley (American, b. 1969); John Kelly (American, b. 1959); Shigeyuki Kihara (Samoan, b. 1975); Şükran Moral (Turkish, b. 1962); Mariko Mori (Japanese, b. 1967); Yasumasa Morimura (Japanese, b. 1951); Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972); Narcissister (American, b. 1971); Man Ray (American, 1890 – 1976); Tomoko Sawada (Japanese, b. 1977); Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954); Yinka Shonibare (British-Nigerian, b. 1962); Tseng Kwong Chi (Chinese-American, 1950 – 1990); Wang Qingsong (Chinese, b. 1966); Gillian Wearing (British, b. 1963); Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953); and David Wojnarowicz (American, 1954 – 1992).
The exhibition opens with works dating back to the 1920s by pioneering artists of gender expression. Two gelatin silver prints by conceptual artist Man Ray, who photographed close friend and artistic collaborator Marcel Duchamp as his female alter-ego Rrose Sélavy, are on view in the exhibition’s anteroom. Belle Haleine (1921), Man Ray’s first photograph of Rrose, which decorates a perfume bottle label, is on loan from the Getty Museum. These works are complemented by a series of surrealist self-portraits (1920 – 1928) by Claude Cahun. Cahun defied societal conventions by making self-portraits that explored gender expression, shaving her head and trying on different versions of femininity and masculinity. Nearly a century later, Gillian Wearing pays homage to these historic works, and alter egos of her predecessors, in her diptych Me as Madame and Monsieur Duchamp (2018) and Me as Cahun Holding a Mask of My Face (2012).
Other artists in the exhibition address themes of race, power, and cultural hybridity by embodying historic figures or cultural icons. In his series African Spirits, Samuel Fosso transforms into icons of the pan-African liberation movement in Self-Portrait (Malcolm X) (2008) and Self-Portrait (Angela Davis) (2008), channeling masterful self-styling that communicated their activism and power. Yasumasa Morimura, who describes himself as a cross between an actor and visual artist, uses props and digital manipulation to channel Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in two portraits (Standing Firm and Skull Ring) of An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo, 2001. David Wojnarowicz stages photographs of himself wearing a mask of a 19th-century French poet in Arthur Rimbaud in New York (1978 – 1979). In a large grid of 12 photographs, Yinka Shonibare’s Dorian Gray (2001) retells the novel written by Oscar Wilde (1890) and later adapted into a film (1945), casting himself as the dandy lead.
Also finding inspiration in cinema, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills recalls scenes from low-budget 1950s movies, with the artist embodying female archetypes and clichés. The exhibition includes two gelatin silver prints from this early series Untitled Film Still #24 (1978) and #44 (1979)—which became a stimulus for conversation about feminism and representation.
Gender roles and stereotypes continue to be a theme investigated by contemporary artists. Mariko Mori’s Tea Ceremony III (1994) depicts a still image from her performance piece in which she channels frustration at gender conventions by playing her alien alter-ego and serving tea to corporate suits in Tokyo. In Ulugali’i Samoa: Samoan Couple (2004 – 2005), on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, artist Shigeyuki Kihara poses as both male and female, transposing her head (altered with a moustache, thicker eyebrows, and short hair) onto a man’s body. This wedding portrait references tropes from 1800s colonial photography that reinforced bias for gender binaries and exoticized stereotypes of Pacific culture. Married with Three Men (2010), a series by Turkish performance artist Şükran Moral, pushes social and political boundaries by inverting typical gender roles, portraying a bride marrying three young grooms.
Carrie Mae Weems and Lina Geoushy further interrogate issues of gender, race, and representation, challenging viewers to reconsider perceptions and the roles we assume as we shape our identity. Carrie Mae Weems takes on the persona of an artist’s model in Not Manet’s Type (1997), questioning the way a white male artist may have perceived her as a subject. In her self-portrait series, Trailblazers, Lina Geoushy inhabits overlooked female icons in Egyptian history as a way to honor their contributions and reclaim erased feminist stories.
In today’s digital culture, self-portraiture is ubiquitous and easily manipulated with filters and artificial intelligence blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Five works from Cao Fei’s futuristic series The Fashions of China Tracy 01-05 (2009) illustrate the artist’s fascination with global pop culture and anime through her avatar China Tracy who takes charge in a fictional Chinese city in the online virtual world Second Life.
Wang Qingsong remixes the past with the present reimagining an ancient Chinese scroll painting in which he appears four times amongst a crowd of party-goers in Night Revels of Lao Li (2000). Azra Akšamija trained artificial intelligence software to create Hallucinating Traditions (2024 – 2025), a video animation sequence morphing self-portraits of her wearing various global and fantastical headdresses.
Portraits by Gardner Museum Artists-in Residence comment on societal norms and expectations and challenge viewers to reconsider their perceptions of identity and personal history. Photographic portraits by Hakeem Adewumi, Sophie Calle, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, and Zanele Muholi are featured in the exhibition. Four photographs from Narcissister‘s Untitled Self-Portrait Series (2012) reflect on the conventional beauty standards of mannequins from the 1950s as well as her own mixed-race identity. Four examples (2010 – 2012) from Jamie Diamond’s sequence I Promise to be a Good Mother confront the complexities of the mother/child relationship through images of the artist caring for a lifelike baby doll.
