Since 1992, Dawoud Bey has undertaken a series of short-term collaborative projects that bring young people and museums together, but this ambitious residency is his first conducted within his home community. For this exhibition, Bey created large color portraits of each of the 12 students. These photographs are accompanied by audio portraits of the teenagers by award-winning radio producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister and by written statements and photographs that the teens have chosen to represent themselves. Presented together, the groupings of photographs, audio, and text question the illusion of completeness of any representation. As a whole, the exhibition design—developed in collaboration with Garofalo Architects, Chicago—presents a multi-faceted and fluid composite of teenage identity.

Click on an image to see a larger version, as well as direct transcripts and audio clips of the students' interviews.