Frieda Toranzo Jaeger: Autonomous Drive

September 22, 2022 – March 13, 2023

MoMA PS1

This fall, MoMA PS1 will present painter Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s (Mexican, b. 1988) first major solo museum exhibition in the United States. On view from September 22, 2022 through March 13, 2023, Autonomous Drive brings together over a dozen recent works including three new commissions. Toranzo Jaeger’s large-scale, dynamic, and modular works incorporate a range of materials and techniques, including ceramic and embroidery.

Toranzo Jaeger’s research into the history of painting, with a particular focus on 15th-century European altar paintings, informs her multi-paneled works.

She draws on the sculptural forms and religious symbolism of this period, which was synchronous with Western colonial expansion, reclaiming and expanding these references to create imagined constructions for a world after decolonization—proposing a futurity of queer freedom, connection to nature, and the creation of new spaces of joy and pleasure. To produce these scenes, Toranzo Jaeger examines traditional origin myths, such as that of Adam and Eve, and recasts them to envision new beginnings. In the newly commissioned End of Capitalism, the Fountain (2022), Toranzo Jaeger reimagines the bacchanal scene in Lucas Cranach’s Fountain of Youth (1546) as a post-capitalist lesbian utopia, with crashed airplane parts strewn in the background.

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger: Autonomous Drive is organized by Ruba Katrib, Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1.

Generous support for Frieda Toranzo Jaeger: Autonomous Drive is provided by The Deborah Buck Foundation.

Additional support is provided by Jeff Magid.