Masculinities: Liberation through Photography

Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, Kenneth Anger, Knut Åsdam, Richard Avedon, Aneta Bartos, Richard Billingham, Cassils, Sam Contis, John Coplans, Jeremy Deller, Rineke Dijkstra, George Dureau, Thomas Dworzak, Hans Eijkelboom, Fouad Elkoury, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Hal Fischer, Samuel Fosso, Anna Fox, Masahisa Fukase, Sunil Gupta, Peter Hujar, Liz Johnson Artur, Isaac Julien, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Karen Knorr, Deana Lawson, Hilary Lloyd, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Marlow, Ana Mendieta, Annette Messager, Duane Michals, Tracey Moffatt, Andrew Moisey, Richard Mosse, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Kalen Na’il Roach, Adi Nes, Catherine Opie, Elle Pérez, Herb Ritts, Collier Schorr, Clare Strand, Mikhael Subotzky, Larry Sultan, Wolfgang Tillmans, Piotr Uklański, Andy Warhol, Karlheinz Weinberger, Marianne Wex, Hank Willis Thomas, David Wojnarowicz, Akram Zaatari

‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography’ explores the ways in which masculinity has been experienced, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day. At a time when ideas around masculinity are undergoing a global crisis and concepts such as ‘toxic’ and ‘fragile’ masculinity are shaping social discourse, over 300 works by 50 international artists such as Laurie Anderson, Richard Avedon, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Peter Hujar, Isaac Julien, Annette Messager, and Catherine Opie offer a panorama of filmic and photographic explorations of masculinity in all its contradictions and complexity. Touching on themes of patriarchy, power, queer identity, race, class, sexuality, hypermasculine stereotypes, as well as female perceptions of men, the works present masculinity as a performative identity largely in flux.