What is Truth?

This year, the Sainsbury Centre investigated how we can know what is true in the world around us through a series of fascinating, interlinked exhibitions.

The dynamic 2024 programme consisted of four key, interlinked exhibitions – In Event of Moon Disaster, Liquid Gender, Jeffrey Gibson: no simple word for time and The Camera Never Lies – bringing together some of the world’s leading artists and creative thinkers, plus a new, interlinking publication.

Watch the Director’s Introduction to the Sainsbury Centre’s What Is Truth? season here

In Event of Moon Disaster
17 February – 4 August 2024

The programme kicked off with an Emmy Award-winning interactive experience that is a deep dive into misinformation and conspiracy. Using AI to tell an alternative history, the show brought to light how an event as influential as the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing could be manipulated, and how doubt can be cast on even the most well-known of facts.

Liquid Gender
17 February – 4 August 2024

In an exploration of the relationship between gender expression and identity, with a focus on pre-colonial traditions, works presented were by a myriad of internationally acclaimed artists, including new work, UK premieres and new acquisitions.

Jeffrey Gibson: no simple word for time
24 February – 4 August 2024

In his first solo exhibition at a UK museum, American artist Jeffrey Gibson (b.1972) created a new site-specific installation for the Sainsbury Centre. The first Indigenous artist to represent the USA at this year´s Venice Biennale, Gibson is a painter and sculptor whose work is held in many major American collections. Incorporating murals, paintings, textiles and historical objects, Gibson’s work also weaves together text drawn lyrics, poetry and his own writing, complete with references to abstraction, fashion and popular culture.

The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project
18 May – 20 October 2024

This dynamic exhibition re-evaluated the most iconic images of the past 100 years. The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project explored the impact and influence photography has had on shaping – and in some cases distorting the narrative of major global events.

Lower Galleries: Tank Man and The Heart of Truth
To 20 October 2024

As part of The Camera Never Lies exhibition, Tank Man focused on the iconic images of a single demonstrator blocking the path of tanks leaving Beijing’s Tiananmen Square amid pro-democracy protests in 1989.

The Heart of Truth explored religious teachings of truthfulness within Shinto and Buddhism with a display of historic painting and objects, curated by Vanessa Tothill in partnership with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.

New publication in February 2024

Accompanying this season was a new book, What is Truth? exploring the question of truth in art history, photography, museums and art in a post-truth world.

It included new essays by academics and curators Frances Borzello, Paul Luckraft, Tania Moore and Pelumi Odubanjo, alongside conversations exploring these questions with The Incite Project’s Harriet Logan and Tristan Lund, as well as artists Jeffrey Gibson and Rashaad Newsome.

What is Truth? was edited by Tania Moore and published by the Sainsbury Centre.

Images from top:

Stuart Franklin The Tank Man stopping the column of T59 tanks. Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China. 4th June 1989. © Stuart Franklin, Magnum Photos

In Event of Moon Disaster at the Sainsbury Centre. Copyright: Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta. Photo: Kate Wolstenholme

Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, Imagine Life-Size, and I’m Tyra, p66-67 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Jeffrey Gibson. Photo by Brian Barlow. Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio.

Richard Mosse, Poison Glen, 2012 © Richard Mosse

Seated figure of Bodhisattva, Production Place: Japan, Historic Period: 10th-11th century, UEA no: 1281.

Quote: Jago Cooper, 2024