Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, March 8-July 7 2024
In the Now explores and challenges traditional categories of gender, nation, and photography, featuring works made since 2000 by women artists born or working in Europe. Many artists contend with representations of the body, with individual perspectives on beauty, femininity, objectification, and what it means to be an artist who identifies as a woman today. Though born or based in Europe, these artists may or may not locate their practices geographically or in accordance with nationalistic assumptions around identity. Finally, the wide-ranging material and conceptual approaches testify to the expediting force of technology, which has made photography subject to greater circulation, alteration, and abstraction. Selected from the collection of Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl—donated to LACMA and the Brooklyn Museum in 2021—the exhibition suggests that women photographers practicing in Europe today are global citizens pointing toward a future in which limiting statements can yield to productive questions.