Catherine Opie is perhaps best known for her self-portraits—Cutting (1993), Pervert (1994), and Nursing (2004)—and Being and Having (1991) and Portraits (1993–97) series which captured lesbian and gay communities in Los Angeles. Freeways (1994–95), Domestic (1995–98), and Mini-malls (1997–98), and other projects like American Cities by Opie center infrastructure and suburbia.
Opie’s photographs are now on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in an exhibition designed by Katy Barkan, the founder of Los Angeles–based practice Now Here. Catherine Opie: To Be Seen features works dating back to 1991 and denotes the Los Angeles artist’s first major exhibition in the U.K.
Several gallery spaces are lacquered in dark blue and red paint as part of the exhibition, emblematic of the heavy tones Opie uses as backdrop for her subjects. Per a press release from Now Here, the portraits are meant to “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.”
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen is spread across three floors. Barkan’s exhibition design prioritized creating sightlines between the gallery rooms. Museumgoers pass seamlessly between spaces with self-portraits and family photographs. The exhibition thematically presents ideas related to inclusion, visibility, and identity.
The more politically charged works are located in the first rooms visitors encounter. The subsequent rooms contain Opie’s portraits and landscape photographs, blurring the “personal and collective.” Visitors make their way from the explicitly “queer room” to photographs of surfers and football players, and family moments like cookouts.
Prior to the opening, in 2022, Opie took 12 portraits of the Barkan family, including one of the exhibition designer. Grouped together, the portraits tell a story about a family that lives “across continents and [is] of mixed heritage,” a curatorial statement reads. The family members are rendered “at once individual and interconnected.”
Another prominent subject Opie photographed for the show: Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, and their two children. The family portraits of the Barkans and Elton John are grouped in the same room, and were shot in the same style as Opie’s Domestic (1998) series.
“The design reconstitutes the Gallery itself within the exhibition, creating ‘rooms within rooms’ that allow for a direct encounter with both the formalities of portraiture and the politics of identity,” a statement from Now Here affirms.
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen is open through May 31.
→ Continue reading at The Architect's Newspaper
