About the Exhibition

Rendered in energetic, expressive brush strokes coded with private meaning, the repeated motifs of cups, bowls, and plants tell an autobiographical narrative about the artist’s domestic life, marriage, and changing family dynamics.

 

Opening Party | December 6

5:00–7:00

Mapping Home by Michael Hawkins-Burgos brings together the observed, the imagined, and the remembered in a contemplative collection of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes that thoughtfully balance the sweet and the sorrowful.  Poised compositions of geometric forms serve as personal visual journals, where Hawkins-Burgos organizes his thoughts and feelings on family, loneliness, and the space where we seek to feel most comfortable, loved, and understood—home.

Rendered in energetic, expressive brush strokes coded with private meaning, the repeated motifs of cups, bowls, and plants tell an autobiographical narrative about the artist’s domestic life, marriage, and changing family dynamics. The works are titled as to the day, month, year, and meal that the painting recalls, but only Hawkins-Burgos has the key to unlock the significance of these details. Who does the red mug belong to? Was the white bowl turned upside down or is it a visual metaphor about a family member spilling their soul?

Hawkins-Burgos is a self-taught painter and filmmaker from Milwaukee. His short film, “Don’t Go” (2011), won a Milwaukee Film Festival Cream City Cinema Award, and his feature-length independent film, “Heebie Jeebies” (2005), was distributed internationally. Mapping Home is Hawkins-Burgos’s first solo museum show.

This exhibition is open to the public at MOWA | DTN, the museum’s satellite location inside Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.

Image: Michael Hawkins-Burgos, Politics and Plants, 2021
Image: Michael Hawkins-Burgos, Lunch 11.02.22, 2022