Portrait of the Contemporary Artist

In Spring 2023, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden partnered with MTV and the Smithsonian Channel for the series The Exhibit, a reality show highlighting the processes and works of seven artists as they competed for a solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn. The final episode asked artists to present their versions of a self-portrait, a seemingly straightforward task that was anything but. In a way, the entire series became an exercise in discursive definitions of self-portraiture as the artists grappled with how to best present themselves to an audience perhaps unfamiliar with their work. Interspersed with the weekly statements of self were issues of social justice, social media, and imaginings of possible futures. Ultimately, Baseera Khan, an American artist of Muslim and Afghani-Indian descent, won the competition through a reinterpretation of traditional South Asian expression of feminine power. Although the series has been criticized for various reasons, the production did require that we continue to consider these intersections and recognize the inherent “self-portrait-ness” of contemporary art. This panel takes this notion raised by The Exhibit as a point of departure to consider how diaspora Asian artists today grapple with issues of process, identity, or social constructions through self-portraiture. How does technology and social media factor into these images? What can we gain by examining and re-examining self-portraiture through the lens of the diaspora experience? We welcome papers which examine conventional notions of self-portraiture as well as those that expand the boundaries of what might be considered a self-portrait.