The Emotional Show

The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art is pleased to present The Emotional Show, an exhibition that explores some of the techniques artists have used to grapple with the demanding and amorphous territory of human emotions. By representing emotions as a complex array of phenomena, The Emotional Show pays homage to these sensations that drive our actions and give shape to our lives.

The act of making an artwork around an emotion puts the artist in the position of both a “feeler” and an observer, one who finds an emotion through which the emotion can be framed. The Emotional Show encompasses a variety of such framings. Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader bring a wry humor to their observations of human behavior under pressure in their performance video, “Classified Digits.” Keith Magruder’s paper installation, “Get Home Safe,” casts a warm brightness over the complicated feelings of comfort and vulnerability he experienced as a child in the 1980s and ‘90s. “When you grow up in a family with a long legacy of slavery, military, and during the tough times in Washington, D.C., you learn quickly that not everyone gets home safe,” he says. Martin Kreloff invokes fear, domination, and alarm, but turns them into a luscious guilty thrill by channeling them through two histrionic pop culture figures: Joan Crawford and the Evil Queen from Walt Disney’s animated Snow White.

The artists ask questions about emotions. How consciously do we choose the paths that lead to them? Can they be both personal and communal? Can cause and effect be tracked? What do we look like to other people when we experience them? Miguel Rodriguez tackles the last question with a series of expressive figurative ceramics. Other artists, such as Sara Jean Odam and John McVay, work to lend visual form to their impalpable interior sensations, the aspects of emotion that no one else can see. Are there objects that suggest emotions without any further commentary—maybe Joan Linder’s meticulous replicas of tissue boxes?

Visitors are given space to meditate on emotions of their own as they relax inside one of Tamar Ettun’s color-rich inflatable environments (previously seen in the artist’s joyful 2017 solo exhibition, Jubilation Inflation), and consider the iconic commercialisation of happiness represented by a curation of buttons assembled from a collection of over 5,000 smiling objects maintained by The Smile Face Museum.

Emotions lie at the heart of what artists do and they are not often the focus of exhibitions. But as Audre Lorde writes: “Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” And as Mary Oliver urges: “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. … Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

The Emotional Show includes artworks from the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art’s permanent collection, along with works on loan from local, national, and international artists. It features art by Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Daniel Bodner, Tanny Chang, Ashley Hairston Doughty, Tamar Ettun, Ali Fathollahi, Liana Finck, Jenna Gribbon, Dan45 Hernandez, Q’shaundra James, Darren Johnson, Lel Khim, Eri King, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Branden Koch, Martin Kreloff, Wendy Kveck, Jason Lazarus, Joan Linder, Keith Magruder, John McVay, Groana Melendez, Quindo Miller, Sara Jean Odam, Néstor Pérez-Molière, Edward Renouf, Heidi Rider, Miguel Rodriguez, Cara Romero, Lorna Simpson, Lester Sloan, Lance L. Smith, Brittany Tucker, Geovany Uranda, Jen Urso, Fulton Leroy Washington, Megan Whitmarsh, Mikayla Whitmore, Thomas Ray Willis, Yek, Brian Zimmerman, and The Smile Face Museum.