E-Mail This Article to a Friend Showing I.D. ‘Self-Evidence’ at the DeCordova, ‘Spiritual Geometry’ in Newton, and ‘Traveling Scholars’ at the MFA BY RANDI HOPKINS

"Identity" became a big buzzword in art in the early 1990s, as personal and political aspects of our racial, cultural, and sexual experience leapt to the forefront of our aesthetic consciousness, challenging the apparent hegemony of Western art history with exotic pluralism and multiculturalism. While an abiding fascination with self has long been a source of inspiration for artists — self-portraits have existed since the medieval era — the 1990s saw the dawn of a new approach to self-definition, and a proliferation of new avenues for expressing the self in art. In the 21st century, technological and scientific advances have continued to affect our image of who we are, all of which makes the ambitious, complex new exhibition "Self-Evidence: Identity in Contemporary Art," opening at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park on February 7 with work by a staggering 28 artists, a great opportunity to take the pulse of current trends in self-expression.

Each of the artists in "Self-Evidence" uses some aspect of his or her own self as a starting point for examining what we know or can know about ourselves, and how that knowledge can be visually expressed. They raise questions like, what do we really learn about someone from looking at their picture? What does our driver’s-license photo or our fourth-grade class picture say about us? Does our DNA or electrochemistry tell more? Our bodies, in sickness and in health, in age and in youth, are the focus of work by several of the artists, including LA-based Walead Beshty, who created his own weird fictive genetic clone by sending eight different photographs of himself as a child to a forensic scientist, who "age progressed" the photographs to the age of 25, using techniques developed to help find missing children. The resulting images are each markedly different — factual-seeming portraits of no one. At another end of this spectrum, Boston-based artist Jennifer Hall, who has temporal-lobe epilepsy, uses computer-imaging technology to make sculptures "of" her seizures, transforming her mental states into exquisite, haunting forms using materials such as sterling silver and chocolate.

Sometimes the most insightful view into the modern self is still found via more-or-less straightforward portraiture, as evidenced by Boston-based painter Barbara Poole’s large paintings tackling the psychological trials and tribulations of the middle-aged American woman, including a brave and humorous, eight-foot wide triple self-portrait titled, She had discovered through trial and error that her instincts were more reliable than any map (2001).

By intriguing contrast, it is the ineffable — the artist in relationship with something arguably other than self — that is on the program in "Spiritual Geometry," opening January 30 at the New Art Center in Newton. This exhibition includes work by ten artists whose exploration of structure and transcendence reveals the beauty engendered by the tension between. Thad Beal, Maggi Brown, Grace DeGennaro and Maryellen Latas are among those whose work promises to make this exhibition illuminating.

And opening at the Museum of Fine Arts on February 8, "Traveling Scholars 2003," presents work by the 2003 recipients of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts’ traveling-scholarship awards for fifth-year students and alumni. This year, the eagerly anticipated annual exhibition, featuring the fruits of one of the largest endowed art-school grant programs in the country, introduces larger audiences to the deserving work of eleven artists, including Eirene Efstathiou, Heidi Marston, and Boru O’Brien O’Connell.

"Self-Evidence: Identity in Contemporary Art" is at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln, February 7 through May 30; call (781) 259-8355. "Spiritual Geometry" is at the New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newtonville, January 30 through March 12; call (617) 964-3424. "Traveling Scholars 2003" is at Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, February 8 through March 14; call (617) 369-3718.