Exhibition Review - This We Believe at 21c in Louisville, KY


Published January 14th 2025
By Eileen Yanoviak

 
Valerie Hegarty Crumpled Clipper Ship, 2019 - Courtesy of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotels.

Edi Rama, an artist featured in This We Believe at 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, said, “...art is like a prayer.” Revisiting this exhibition multiple times was like repeating a prayer, both a solemn plea for help and an earnest expression of hope. I saw This We Believe four times before I could write about it, all during the tumultuous 2024 Americanpresidential election cycle. Finally, nearly two months post-election with many unknowns in the future, I can write with deep gratitude for the capacity of artists to document, inspire, lament, interpret, instigate, question, and unveil the often contradictory powers of ideology and the collective “We”. 

The tone of the exhibition is set by two ambitious works by Robin Kid, aka The Kid. At a commanding 82 1/4 x 175 1/2 in. scale, the painting I Believe In The Promised Land, 2019, declares that the Promised Land of lore is a dystopian nightmare of violence, division, and surveillance that renders young people paralyzed. In the exhibition frontispiece, The State I Am In, In The Consciousness Of A Country’s Empty Mind, 2019, The Kid creates a hyper-realist sculptural scene of a young man holding an infant while astride a buffalo and adorned with symbols of American culture, such as the American flag and a Buffalo Bills football helmet. The figure, rendered in astonishing detail, is apathetically resigned to what the didactic material calls, “competing mythologies consuming, confounding, and dividing the collective American psyche.”    


ROBIN KID aka THE KIDI Believe In The Promised Land, 2019 - Courtesy of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotels.

The history of Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism provides the foundational mythology for the exhibition, an awareness that the past influences perceptions of the present. Quintessential examples of Titus Kaphar’s revisionist paintings and Kara Walker’s silhouettes unveil the hidden histories of race. Valerie Hegarty’s Crumpled Clipper Ship, 2019, references the history of colonialism and capitalism because the clipper ship revolutionized world trade.  

While American ideology is forefronted, the exhibition, however, is not solely about what it means to be American. With more than 100 multi-media works by artists from all over the world, there is a sweeping constellation of contemporary problems and events that are both particular (to a time, place, or people) and universal. 

Power and violence are among the most prevalent themes of the exhibition, introduced by The Kid in his painting where he incorporates news events such as white supremacists carrying tiki torches during the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. But the violence is obviously not isolated. Kazakhstani artists Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev created a series called Vintage (Harsh Detention of Protesters) in which scenes of protestor oppression in their home country are embroidered onto the surface of a white sheet that is simultaneously a cover, a shroud of mourning, and a symbolic flag. The small scale of the embroidery amidst the expansive white implies the violence is only a blip in an otherwise unblemished vision of nationhood, small and precious.


Sebastian ErrazurizThe Police State, 2018 - Courtesy of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotels.

Power structures are also approached in the depiction of world political leaders. In a nod to ancient marble portraits and images of Christ enthroned, the 3D printed all-white resin sculpture by Sebastian Errazuriz, The Police State, 2018, shows Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin standing beside the enthroned Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both Putin and Trump are handless, neutered of their power, beside the monarchical Xi Jinping. While humorous, the sculpture also underscores a pervasive sense of anxiety in the exhibition. What is at once satirical is also threatening as it reveals machinations beyond the control of ordinary citizens. 

This display of unhinged power is countered by the individual person’s struggle against or conformity with power structures and systems. One response is a sense of apathy, insignificance, and isolation, especially from young people, as illustrated by Muntean/Rosenblum’s Untitled (there are little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck in the dark), 2019. This gorgeous hyper-realist, large-scale painting spotlights individuals with brilliant tenebrism in a mall-like desolate setting steeped in darkness. Each figure seems to float in its pod of light both hopeful and hopelessly alone.

Muntean/Rosenblum Untitled,  2019 - Courtesy of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotels.

In contrast to the powerless apathy of the ordinary person, protest is a form of power for the people. Dread Scott’s Capital, part of the Obliterated Power series, is a visual and gestural act of protest against systemic oppression. Scratching out the seat of power releases anger and fury onto a cherished symbol of democracy. The image begs the question, what would we build in its place? 

Symbols are indeed an important part of ideology and mythmaking, holding a myriad of meaning and value in inanimate objects. The exhibition emphasizes both the efficacy and fallibility of symbols, especially flags and money. Many of the works in the exhibition memorialize acts of resistance. Carlos Aires’s Disasters series uses the symbolic power of currency, which has no intrinsic value, to lift up women protestors across the world. Effectively defacing the currency of that country, he collages images of protestors onto the surface, a tension between symbol and action.  

One of the highlights of the exhibition is an animated film by Kota Ezawa. Composed of watercolor stills based on scenes from National Football Games where players knelt during the singing of the National Anthem. Abstracted to remove the details of faces and expressions, the lovingly rendered images are set against a symphonic version of the Star Spangled Banner. It is a moving tribute to the bravery of those that peacefully protested racism. 


Kota Ezawa National Anthem, 2019  - Courtesy of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotels.

Likewise, Mitch Epstein’s Veterans Respond Flag, Sacred Stone Camp, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota 2017, 2019, is a documentary photograph that shows the flag hoisted upside down, a tactic adopted by the American Indian Movement in the 1970s and redeployed by Veterans in response to threats of an oil pipeline being constructed. The symbolic flag turned upside down is an act of resistance, memorialized by Epstein. In addition to flags and currency, religious symbols are evoked to challenge the purity of faith, drawing relationships between religion and violence, for example. Al Farrow’s reliquary composed of guns and bullets is a reminder that violence is common in the name of religion.


Mitch Epstein Veterans Respond Flag, Sacred Stone Camp, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota, 2017 - Courtesy of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c Museum Hotels.

Whether artists are evoking the power of symbols or the fallacy of power structures, they understand the power of imagery to convey and contradict complex political and social ideologies. Although This We Believe might feel borderline despairing, there is a lingering hope that art can be both a prayer and a protest released into the world to enact change. 

This We Believe runs through January at the  21c Museum Hotel Louisville. More information can be found on the museum website.