A photomontage featuring quadrupled, merged, and mirrored bust-length surreal portraits of the artist with a bald head surrounded by collaged images, including statues of Hermaphroditus and Aphrodite.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, from Aveux non Avenus (Disavowed Confessions), with Marcel Moore, 1930. Mary B. Jackson Fund

Introduction

The Performative Self-Portrait

May 13 - November 12, 2023

This exhibition explores the work of photographers who turn the camera back upon themselves. From capturing themselves in shadows and reflections to trying on alternative or speculative identities, The Performative Self-Portrait explores the body as material and medium and photography as vehicle to consider ways artists use self-portraiture to enact the self, question history, and articulate identity. Made between 1930 and the present, works in the exhibition range from new acquisitions to older works on view for the first time.

Curated by Conor Moynihan, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs, and Matthew Kluk, Brown PhD 2025, History of Art and Architecture