October 2, 2026-January 22, 2027
Opening Reception: Thursday October 1, 2026, 6:00pm

 

Global Village Museum of Arts & Cultures
200 West Mountain Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80521

How do you see yourself? And what does it mean to be seen?

The Global Village Museum of Arts and Cultures presents Exposure: Identity and the Evolving Image, an exhibition exploring the self as subject, and photography as the act of defining it. 

Across cultures and throughout history, the act of capturing a likeness has carried different meanings, different weight, different risk. This exhibition asks artists to bring their own relationship to that act, and to themselves, into focus. 

Selected works are exhibited alongside vintage cameras and camera obscura, tracing the technical history of photography and its evolving role in shaping personal and communal identity around the world. From the global reach of Kodak, whose legacy has local roots in Northern Colorado, to contemporary photographic practice, Exposure explores how the tools we use to see ourselves have always reflected something larger than the frame. 

Work from Aaron Wilder's Invisible Self Portrait project is included in the exhibition. This video essay animates a single photograph of Wilder's reflection in an airplane seatback screen, gradually shifting from negative to positive space across the grayscale spectrum. Accompanied by a self-dialogue informed by the writings of Swiss psychologist Alice Miller, the work inhabits the threshold between visibility and disappearance. The image becomes a metaphorical edge where queer identity, memory, and privilege are continuously negotiated within the uncertain terrain of self-recognition.

Work from Neither Sand nor Rock is also exhibited. It's a series of photography collages that represent a meditation on the psychological, imaginative, and physical gaps between childhood and adulthood. Each piece mixes collages of toy building blocks at various stages of (in)completeness. The psyches and personalities of children are built upon the foundations of the priorities and insecurities of their parents. These priorities and insecurities are a tangled web of subjective feelings and reactions of notions of identity vis-à-vis religion, socio-economic status, gender, and countless other forces. Neither Sand nor Rock is a series focusing on the (de)construction of personhood and the expectations of intersecting (and at times clashing) belief systems.

The Global Village Museum of Arts and Cultures (GVM) brings the world's traditions, stories, and artistic expressions to life. Since their founding in 2006, GVM has been a gateway to the world's rich tapestry of cultures, traditions, art, and history in Fort Collins, Colorado.