CMCA’s new exhibit explores identity with a focus on the human face | Column

 Bianca Beck, "Blue and Not Blue," 2024, acrylic and oil on wood panel, with artist-made aluminum frame. (Image courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art) I have always seen Bianca Beck’s sculptures as a kind of celebration. Their sheer bigness, their jubilant electric colors, the confidence of their postures — all of this felt like an in-your-face proclamation of the insouciance, subversiveness, possibility and utter joy of queer culture. Beck’s works have always loomed, posed and vogued their way into our psyches.  All of that remains true in the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s solo exhibition, “Bianca Beck: Eyes” (through Sept. 6). But there is also a new element in the mix, something I would describe as a thoroughly disarming tenderness.  The occasion for this turn toward this gentle, nurturing emotion is primarily due, I believe, to Beck’s experience of pregnancy and childbirth. There is nothing like this transformative experience to soften one’s edges. The fact that this occurred more or less simultaneously as the artist declared themselves nonbinary creates a fusion between old and new artistic concerns. In at least some respects, the older and more recent works are not actually fundamentally separate. The sculptures and paintings that predated this show were at some level about identity, while this exhibition is more focused on the physical formation of selfhood before circumstance, familial and social conditions impose identities upon that self. It is a continuum. [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/11_CMCA-BiancaBeck-EachStarASunNeonWhite-2026-1.jpg) Bianca Beck, “Each star a sun / Neon white,” 2026, papier-mâche, wood, steel wire, acrylic and oil paint, steel. (Image courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art) One oft-cited inspiration for Beck’s former body of work is an origin myth recounted in Plato’s _Symposium_, which held that humans were originally twice our current size and possessed two of everything — heads, sets of limbs, genitalia. In this myth, these beings had three sexes: the traditional male and female, as well as intersex. When these prototypical humans tried to scale Olympus, Zeus became suspicious of their power and sliced them in two, setting off our eternal quest for our missing other half.  The science of sexuality and gender has long supported the idea of more than two sexes. Citing a 2019 study, a 2025 article on the National Institutes of Health website concludes, “The view that there are only two sexes, male and female, is outdated and too narrow as it ignores a bounty of evidence that sex is not a binary and dichotomous property.”  But nuance is not something humans tolerate too well, which is why Beck’s sculptures in particular have always felt so triumphant and vital. They have no truck with ambiguity, even as they mix many artistic genres, formats, materials and more. Beck’s works are equally informed by Plato’s “Symposium” as they are intersectional feminist thought (bell hooks) and the queer icon Grace Jones. And, of course, they reside at the intersection of painting and sculpture. Form becomes a vehicle for painted gesture and expression. Advertisement In the new work, sculptures appear less imposing and confrontational. They have a lacy two-dimensionality to them (though we can circle them entirely, they exist, essentially, on a flat plane). At times they can appear to relate to anatomical drawings. It’s hard to ignore the fetal shape of a sculpture like “Each star a sun / Neon white” or the head profile of “Stardust we breathe / Skin we shed,” which harkens to textbook diagrams that identify specific features of this bodily part’s anatomy — brain, eyes, trachea — even if these do not appear where we normally expect to find them.  [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/04_CMCA-BiancaBeck-StardustWeBreatheSkinWeShed-2026-2.jpg) Bianca Beck, “Stardust we breathe / Skin we shed,” 2026, papier-mâche, wood, steel wire, acrylic and oil paint, steel. (Image courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art) But there are more cosmic intimations here too. A title like “Stardust we breathe / Skin we shed” encompasses the larger truth that many of the substances that make up the periodic table of elements, and thus also the human body, were formed in the explosions of supernovas. Our human skin — an apt metaphor for the surface identity we present to the world — is something that ages and dies, while these elements continue to live on in the universe.  Within this realization comes an implicit appreciation of the preciousness of human life. That is, _all_ of human life, not just certain forms of it. “We are stardust / We are golden,” as the iconic Joni Mitchell song affirmed. Painting titles such as “Blue and Not Blue” and “Comes a Time” pertain to works depicting a face and, behind it, several more faces, implying the many-layered complexity of not only our physical composition, but of the infinite identities we can tap inside of us.  [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/28_CMCA-BiancaBeck-ComesATime-2024.jpg) Bianca Beck, “Comes a Time,” 2024, acrylic and oil on wood panel, with artist-made aluminum frame. (Image courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art) All the paintings and forms, in fact, are essentially faces. In art history, faces have a wide array of purposes and meanings — everything from representing conventional ideas of beauty to masks we present to the world that conceal our true selves. But none of Beck’s faces conform to human logic. Neither did many of Picasso’s, it’s worth mentioning. But the difference here is that the Spanish artist’s depictions became a methodology and technique. They did not carry meaning (except, as many scholars have pointed out, to reveal his own misogyny).  Eyes, which can similarly be interpreted as everything from windows on the soul to inscrutable barriers (as in a dissociated, steely stare), appear in odd places or, in a painting like “See Me Plural,” come in sixes. This painting predates Beck’s revelation of nonbinary self, which clearly indicates that questions of who we are — or how many different “I’s” we hold and harbor — have long occupied her thought processes and imagination.  Advertisement When seen through the context of Beck’s pregnancy and subsequent childbirth, the later works in particular seem like a plea for the world to respect their child’s uniqueness, to not impose upon this precious being a set of impossible and innately false expectations. Who can quibble with this simple desire?  [](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/21_CMCA-BiancaBeck-SeeMePlural-2021-1.jpg) Bianca Beck, “See Me Plural,” 2021, acrylic and oil on wood panel, with artist-made aluminum frame. (Image courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art) This to me brings a level of vulnerability and tenderness not present in the earlier work, which, of course, also makes them more accessible. As the exhibition statement reads, “…Beck’s exhibition is an expression of a profound humanism in an inhumane time.” We need look no further than the current assault on nonbinary identities and trans freedom to grok how timely and urgent this show is. _Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland and can be reached at_ [_\[email protected\]_](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#412b2e332624012b322033202f262e6f222e2c)_. This column is free to access through support by The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation._ * * * [IF YOU GO](https://www.cmcanow.org/) [“Bianca Beck: Eyes,”](https://www.cmcanow.org/) Center for Maine Contemporary Art, 21 Winter St., Rockland. Through Sept. 6. 10 a.m-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday. For more, 207-701-5005, or go to [cmcanow.org](https://www.cmcanow.org/) Copy the Story Link Tagged: [art exhibit](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/art-exhibit/), [Center for Maine Contemporary Art](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/center-for-maine-contemporary-art/)