Ways of Knowing

If history is only as real as what is remembered, and what is remembered is seen as truth, then questioning the truth becomes a means of altering reality. The 11 artists featured in Ways of Knowing excavate these dynamics with a sense of curiosity, rigor, and play. Acknowledging that information is produced and research is partial, they challenge assumptions about how we come to know what we know.

Presented in three sections, the exhibition opens with “The Collectors.” Here, artists employ historical systems of categorization with an awareness of the absurdity of their efforts. Some, like Iosu Aramburu and Gala Porras-Kim, create expansive displays of art that expose the gaps in official records. Others use categorization to tease out entirely new narratives; Chang Yuchen, for instance, highlights the connections between language and land by developing a writing system made of corals.

The relationship to land undergirds many of the works in the show, most notably those in “Time and Place.” Shirking Western frameworks altogether, these artists turn to methods of documentation rooted in Indigenous and place-based ways of knowing. Filmmaker Sky Hopinka collapses linear notions of time, drawing upon the land as a keeper of memory, while artists such as Christine Howard Sandoval make tangible the effects of resource extraction.

Where “Time and Place” looks for truth in the physical world, “Fiction and Fact” turns to the imaginary. The works in this section ask us to consider what truths reside beyond the strictly factual and what can be revealed through speculation. Childhood drawings, hypothetical conversations, and social experiments all emerge as vehicles of inquiry.

Spanning drawing, photography, film, and installation, Ways of Knowing charts some of the most profound ways that today’s artists engage with information and research. Most works are being shown in the United States for the first time. Together, they invite us to reconsider the complexities of knowledge, identity, and culture.