On View January 31 – May 10, 2026
What My Mother Gave Me is the first retrospective exhibition of the remarkable work of trailblazing photographer Nona Faustine (1969–2025). Across multiple series, the exhibition aims to illuminate how Faustine approached the political in her own life, from powerful maternal, ancestral, and feminist perspectives.
The projects on view span nearly three decades, beginning with Faustine’s earliest series, Young Mothers (1992–94), made when she was an undergraduate art student in New York City. These intimate photographs follow a group of young mothers Faustine befriended in her neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Over the course of nearly two years, Faustine photographed these new mothers, from pregnancy through the first weeks and months with their children. In particular, she engaged with them around the fears, hopes, challenges, and joys that they experienced taking on the responsibility of motherhood at a young age, often as single parents.
In Mitochondria (2008–16), we see three generations of women— Faustine and her mother, sister, and daughter—living together under one roof and caring for one another. These tender family pictures are punctuated by staged portraits—Faustine holding her daughter Queen Ming on her hip, raising a bandaged fist in the air; Queen sitting in the crook of a tree, surrounded by white pumps dangling from the branches—that anticipate her celebrated series White Shoes. The Mitochondria series positions the resilience and devotion of Black matriarchy as deeply political, and mother and artist as indistinguishable roles in Faustine’s life.
For her best-known project, White Shoes (2012–21), Faustine researched and identified sites across New York City that are connected to the history of slavery, including places where enslaved people were auctioned and sold, desecrated burial grounds, and the former home of abolitionist Sojourner Truth. On those sites, Faustine staged explosively powerful self-portraits in which she appears—often nude—in a pair of white high heels, asserting her body and her presence as both proud ancestor and defiant counter-monument.
This exhibition is dedicated to Nona Faustine; her mother Queen Elizabeth Simmons; her sister Channon Anita; and her heart, her daughter Queen Ming.
