Directionless

A sweeping group exhibition organized by artist Rashid Johnson exploring how artists navigate disorientation and exhaustion in contemporary life. About Opening this summer, 'Directionless' is a sweeping group exhibition organized by artist Rashid Johnson. The project begins with the recognition that we are living through a period marked not only by profound disorientation, but by exhaustion. Political certainties have frayed, collective narratives have weakened, ecological anxieties deepen, and inherited systems of meaning no longer provide stable points of orientation. In such a condition, directionlessness emerges not as a temporary loss of bearings but as a defining experience of contemporary life. The exhibition asks what forms of thought, feeling, and artistic practice become possible when certainty is no longer available and when exhaustion itself has become a shared social condition. Rather than seeking resolution, Directionless considers how artists inhabit states of suspension, ambiguity, opacity, and fragmentation. The works gathered here do not offer maps out of uncertainty. Instead, they propose ways of remaining present within it. They explore what it means to navigate a world in which identities are increasingly unstable, histories remain unresolved, and the future appears both open and difficult to imagine. Organized by artist Rashid Johnson, the exhibition adopts a deliberately polyphonic structure. Johnson invited artists Charles Gaines, Firelei Báez, and Cristina Iglesias to nominate peers from beyond the gallery's roster, dispersing curatorial authority and allowing the exhibition to develop through affinity, divergence, and conversation. This artist-driven methodology reflects the exhibition's central premise: that orientation is not fixed or inherited, but continuously negotiated through relationships, encounters, and acts of imagination. Rashid Johnson: 'We are all living inside a shared sense of disorientation right now—one that is evolving with increasing momentum. The artists here aren't paralyzed by that condition; they're animated by it. [...] What they offer isn't a map, but a set of strategies for moving forward when the terrain is unfamiliar.' This year's Education Lab, 'Bitacora,' is developed in collaboration with the University of the Balearic Islands and the University of Barcelona. The student-led program nurtures national connectivity between the universities, exploring what learning looks like beyond an institutional setting and facilitating a launchpad for creating, sharing and collaborative research. Responding to the themes of the group exhibition 'Directionless,' the Education Lab echoes the very concept set by Rashid Johnson, to find new creative pathways and orientations through artistic practice. Read more Toggle Painting Photography Sculpture Mixed media Multi-disciplinary Installation