Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture focuses on the enduring theme of the artist's self-portrait. The exhibition, now on view at Lancaster Museum of Art and History, presents a selection of photographs, prints, drawings, videos, and installation art, primarily by contemporary makers, drawn from LACMA’s collection. The over 50 artists featured in Before You Now contemplate their physicality in realistic fashion, highlight their persona through symbolic tropes, or utilize humor and conceptual methods to enlighten, exaggerate, or camouflage their reflective selves. All together, the work on view is a dynamic introduction to American artists as they see themselves—or as they want to be seen by the public.

To accompany Before You Now, LACMA has produced a series of video portraits introducing just a few of the artists and their works. In this video, artists Alfonso Aceves and Adriana Carranza—known as Kalli Arte Collective—talk about living, working, and raising a family in Los Angeles. For Familia (Family), which was made at the L.A.-based print atelier Self Help Graphics & Art, they used a family photograph taken during the COVID-19 pandemic as the source material. Around the figures, the artists have composed a dynamic composition featuring design elements that symbolize aspects of their Mesoamerican heritage.

“I really wanted to honor that idea of us being connected in the space, being connected to each other,” says Aceves. “What has made us the artists we are today? What contributes to that? We have this home, we have this space. Our community, our family, all those people contribute to that.”

Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture is now on view at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History through April 13, 2025, and will travel to the Vincent Price Art Museum from July 12–September 20, 2025. Before You Now was previously on view at California State University, Northridge, which recently named the Kalli Arte Collective as the inaugural artist for their Virginia A. Orndorff Artist-in-Residence program.