(Revised)The 2026 Whitney Biennial
Teresa Baker Voluminous Day, The Harvest Melting On Our Tongue
review by Minji Kim
The 2026 Whitney Biennial continues to center the question of what “American art” means, but rather than presenting it as a singular or fixed category, the exhibition broadens that definition through a wide range of artistic practices and perspectives. Instead of focusing primarily on specific contemporary issues such as AI, the show draws attention to connections between people, systems, and land, suggesting that American art today operates less as a stable category and more as a network shaped through ongoing interaction. In this sense, the exhibition feels less concerned with categorization and more invested in tracing how social, political, and material relationships overlap and shift. This emphasis on interconnectedness is also reflected in the curatorial approach. As curator Drew Sawyer noted during the official preview, “Rather than coming to our research for the Biennial with a preconceived container, Marcela Guerrero and I let our conversations with artists guide us.” As a result, the exhibition avoids a singular narrative and instead allows multiple practices to coexist. The absence of a clearly defined theme does not feel like a limitation, but rather creates space for different narratives—personal, political, ecological, and historical—to unfold simultaneously, creating a more open and layered reading of the works.
This sense of connection is evident in Teresa Baker’s works. In Voluminous Day and The Harvest Melting on Our Tongue, she combines materials such as yarn, buckskin, and synthetic turf to create suspended, layered surfaces that hang slightly away from the wall, existing between painting, sculpture, and installation. As these materials overlap and collide, boundaries between the natural and artificial begin to blur, emphasizing relationships that are layered, unstable, and continuously shifting.
I appreciated your survey of the Whitney Biennial as concerned with connections between people, systems, and land, and the emphasis on the lack of a single narrative, which has been a large topic of discussion in other reviews I've seen for this year’s biennial. I do think your review could include a small attempt at describing the organization as some rooms did try to take on small themes, or perhaps in including one more artist to really capture the wide breadth of the art world which the show takes on. Perhaps there is something to be said about the artists outside of America as well. Overall you did really well.
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