Contemporary American artist Devan Shimoyama’s work playfully and poignantly dismantles social conventions by representing the complexities of race, gender, and sexuality with compelling, intimate images. Shimoyama pictures the Black American experience and the queer experience as fantastical and ornate, using rich textures, pop-culture references, and decorative materials (an homage to both drag performance and churchgoers of his childhood), while interpreting at great depths ideas of vulnerability and transformation.
Rituals contextualizes Shimoyama’s works as devotional objects, drawing multilayered parallels to historical religious imagery, such as Byzantine icons, Baroque altarpieces, and Renaissance chapel commissions, and situating these works within the contemporary landscape as today’s sacred objects and devotional icons. With neon colors, rhinestones, sequins, feathers, glitter, and fabrics, Shimoyama builds alternative dream worlds that serve simultaneously as counterpoint, echo, and interrogation of the realities around us, which, despite his use of such joyful materials and colors, are not always good experiences. There is an inherent spirituality within these environments and their motifs, that calls viewers to reflection and new understandings.
Rituals will bring together pieces from private and institutional collections, from multiple bodies of Shimoyama’s work, including the Tarot series, the Barbershop series, drag self-portraits, mythologies, transformation sequences, portraiture, and self-portraiture.
Special thanks to David De Buck Gallery, Kavi Gupta Gallery, the Bill and Christy Gautreaux Collection, and the private lenders involved, for their support of this exhibition.
A fully illustrated exhibition catalog will be published, including essays by Vivian Zavataro, Ulrich Executive and Creative Director; and Elizabeth Lisot-Nelson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History, University of Texas at Tyler; a discussion between Devan Shimoyama and Jo Reinert, Ulrich Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and 8 original works of creative writing contributed by writers from across the United States.
Organized by the Ulrich Museum of Art. Curated by Jo Reinert, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Our 2025 Spring exhibitions and associated programs are made possible by the generosity of Ulrich50 donors, for which the Ulrich is very grateful. The Ulrich extends sincere thanks to members of Ulrich Friends with Benefits, whose ongoing support makes programming possible. The City of Wichita and Wichita State University provide funding support for the Ulrich’s general operations.
