This exhibition brings together contemporary artworks across media that explore the poetics and politics of everyday life. Using the day-to-day as both material and subject, these works explore how the ordinary and seemingly incidental can become a powerful source for artistic inquiry, critical reflection, and imagination.

From Rashid Johnson’s film chronicle of his family’s day-to-day routines to Dawn Clements’ monumental drawing of her temporary living space and Tony Feher’s delicate, hanging mass of disposable plastic bottles, artworks in the exhibition reveal the contradictions of daily life—feelings of belonging and alienation, and the tension between permanence and transience.

Most of the works were made within the last thirty years by a diverse group of U.S.-based artists. They show how personal experience is intertwined with larger social, economic, and historical realities. Everyday rituals and routines, common objects, and private spaces become sites for reflection on—and resistance to—these larger structural forces that shape who and what society values, from gendered and racialized labor to the built environment and design.

The exhibition draws primarily from the Henry’s permanent collection, alongside several works borrowed from private collections in the region. Together the artworks in Day-to-Day trace individual and shared narratives of survival and joy, inviting us to contemplate the transformative power of everyday materials and acts of living.

Learn more about the Henry’s collections here.