How do we react creatively in times of crisis, personal or otherwise?  Is it possible to reach through the bubbles we live in, the boarded up windows around us, to locate empathy in ourselves, or spur empathy in others?  

Inspired but not limited by the climate of the pandemic, the ongoing emergency of racist and transphobic violence, and by the political division at the end of the Trump Presidency, Frida Love and Pain includes artworks from the last three decades that draw attention to proactive and enduring actions that elevate personal experience to broader public relevance and purpose.  

The works in the exhibition are made in the context of struggle, and many address loss.  As a strategy, there are sharp and purposeful contrasts: fragility and danger, beauty and illness, hardship and endurance.  These contrasts map out resilient responses to challenges that are all the more resonant for their humility and intimacy.  The artworks seek to lift their subjects, whether personal or social, through recognition and visibility. 

Like Ishiuchi Miyako’s photograph of Frida Kahlo’s cracked sunglasses, the work from which the exhibition takes its name, the artworks in the exhibition feature beauty, love, and empowerment as responses to loss, rage, and/or a sense of confinement.

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