“Precarity is . . . the reality of the human condition,” Lotus L. Kang has said. “Nothing is in a fixed state, including the body and identity.” Kang and the other artists on view in this gallery describe forms of selfhood, both human and nonhuman, that are entangled with past and place. Their artworks reimagine the portrait format, whether by veiling figures, transforming them into blurred abstractions, or forgoing the figure altogether, representing subjects through other means.

Some of the artists in this gallery draw on their ancestral traditions to reactivate traditional visual and material cultures. Others use digital technologies and artificial intelligence to translate human thought into natural and synthetic materials. Without setting strict boundaries between the parasitic and symbiotic—to borrow ideas Kang has explored in her practice—their works point to interconnectedness. Together, they insist that nothing exists closed off from the world.

— from the Museum of Modern Art’s website