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{"id":273650,"date":"2026-01-15T11:37:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T16:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/compte-rendu\/ruth-asawa-retrospective\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T11:47:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T16:47:04","slug":"ruth-asawa-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/ruth-asawa-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Asawa
A Retrospective<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Ruth Asawa was animated by an irrepressible desire to break rules in subtle, elegant, concentrated, and meticulous ways. In this retrospective at MoMA, there are no contemporary dramas on display, none of the ubiquitous nods to politics or power. The galleries are suffused with a meditative silence that evokes the balance of a submerged world: stable, unperturbed, yet always and continuously alive and morphing. The experience is cathartic in unexpected ways. The driving force for the Californian artist of Japanese descent, who died just over a decade ago, was nature\u2014but not the sublime nature of National Geographic<\/em> documentaries or the romanticized landscapes of Friedrich and Constable. Asawa distilled natural forms and colours in ways that achieve an unusually incisive expressive depth, synthetic yet exuberant.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The path traced by the retrospective carefully and sensitively pieces together the portrait of an artist who escaped categorization, finding a surprising point of equilibrium between two seemingly incompatible poles: the structural mysticism of Hilma af Klint and the obsessive modular repetition of Yayoi Kusama. Asawa seems to have shared with af Klint the ability to read the natural world through the archetypal forms of plants, as though each line were the visible reflection of a larger, invisible principle. From Kusama, she inherited an attention to the reiteration of gesture, to the construction of rhythms through modularity. But whereas af Klint\u2019s and Kusama\u2019s overwhelming visions are rooted in psychological or cosmological registers, Asawa sought intensity through transparency: her work does not impose, it reveals. It is a bridge between worlds, a form of secular spirituality in which the disarming simplicity of a metal wire opens infinite perceptual dimensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Ruth$
Ruth Asawa<\/strong>
A Retrospective,<\/em> exhibition view, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025.
\u00a9 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.
Photo: Jonathan Dorado, courtesy of David Zwirner, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris & Hong Kong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Created using a technique learned from a community of Mexican farmers, an interweaving also rooted in Japanese tradition, Asawa\u2019s wire sculptures embody this tension flawlessly. Formed through a continuous loop that requires complete dedication to a precise gesture, they hang from the ceiling like chrysalises, shells, or seed pods: ambiguous and yet beautiful forms literally and metaphorically suspended between animal and plant realms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In reference to these iconic works, the exhibition\u2019s curators rightly insist on the notion of \u201cdrawing in space.\u201d But it is important to remember that drawing, for Asawa, was not simply a medium. It was a way of seeing and thinking: a method for metabolizing reality. Her series of botanical drawings, among the most moving works in the retrospective, show an almost meditative attention to line. By following profiles of leaves, stems, inflorescences, and buds with an elegant and unbroken line, Asawa seemed intent on touching the essence of the vegetal in the most intimate and faithful way possible, without ever interrupting her gaze. The line becomes an act of communion. Each botanical form appears to have been observed with the tenacity of someone who wants to listen, not dominate. These drawings testify to a determined desire to approach nature with respect and curiosity, without imposing interpretations or rhetoric, without seeking symbolic narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Ruth$
Ruth Asawa<\/strong>
A Retrospective,<\/em> exhibition view, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025.
\u00a9 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.
Photo: Jonathan Dorado, courtesy of David Zwirner, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris & Hong Kong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
$\"Ruth$
Ruth Asawa<\/strong>
A Retrospective,<\/em> exhibition view, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025.
\u00a9 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.
Photo: Jonathan Dorado, courtesy of David Zwirner, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris & Hong Kong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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It is perhaps here that MoMA\u2019s retrospective creates a distinction from previous interpretations of Asawa\u2019s work. The references to the injustices endured by her family, including incarceration in an internment camp in Arkansas during the Second World War and the discrimination that prevented her from obtaining a teaching credential, are presented not as biographical information but as turning points, essential to understanding her extraordinary resilience and her deep belief in art as a collective practice. The curators highlight how she transformed racial discrimination into an additional impetus to create spaces for sharing and education. Both her public artworks and her long-standing commitment to arts education testify to a vision in which art and life cannot be separated. For her, making art meant making community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is precisely this idea of total integration between life and creation that emerges forcefully in the MoMA show. Asawa\u2019s practice was never linear or confined to a single discipline. Beyond the wire sculptures, the retrospective presents a surprisingly varied body of work: paintings, prints, masks cast directly from the faces of friends and family, public projects, sculptures made from humble materials such as \u201cbaker\u2019s clay,\u201d a mouldable dough used in domestic kitchens. Every material, every technique, every form seems to affirm the same conviction: art is not specialization, it is experimentation; not detachment, but proximity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Ruth$
Ruth Asawa<\/strong>
A Retrospective,<\/em> exhibition view, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025.
\u00a9 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.
Photo: Jonathan Dorado, courtesy of David Zwirner, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris & Hong Kong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Above all, what one perceives in the MoMA galleries is the profound coherence of an artist who crafted her own language without ever abandoning its relational dimension. There is no narcissism in her work, no desire for monumentality. Even the most imposing sculptures, suspended like totemic presences, seem to remind us that beauty lies not in grandeur but in the patience of daily labour, in the slow rhythm of looping, in the precision of attentive observation. In an era when contemporary artists often indulge in excess, Asawa teaches that complexity can emerge from simplicity, that a wire bent thousands of times can hold more life than a sprawling digital installation. MoMA\u2019s retrospective not only restores Asawa to the central position she deserves in twentieth-century art history but also offers a deeply timely message: art is a way of inhabiting and existing a plural and collective reality in a present and attentive way, of recognizing the beauty of our relationship with the world around us. It is an invitation that, now more than ever, is worth following.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Museum of Modern Art, New York<\/strong>
October 19, 2025\u2013February 7, 2026<\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":273637,"template":"","categories":[884,892],"numeros":[],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[932],"artistes":[1321],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-273650","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-webzine","auteurs-giovanni-aloi-en","artistes-ruth-asawa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/273650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=273650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}