Spanning 42 works built across a decade of research, the artist’s record-breaking debut traces the shadow life of an unnamed federal agent along Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling ramp.
In the world of conceptual photography and institutional research, few artists expose the hidden machinery of global power quite like Taryn Simon. For her monumental solo exhibition at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, titled Father Country I Do Love You, the American artist becomes the first lens-based practitioner to take over Frank Lloyd Wright’s entire rotunda—delivering the largest debut of new work staged in the institution’s history.
Nearly a decade in the making, the project follows the sprawling, labyrinthine trail of a single unnamed former US federal agent, transforming his four decades of classified service, personal choices, and systematic actions into 42 distinct works.
“Simon doesn’t just photograph authority—she dissects the paper trails, structural silences, and unseen violence that keep state infrastructure humming in the dark.”
Ascending the museum’s iconic ramp, viewers move through a dizzying sequence of photographic panels, archival artifacts, and video documentation. The exhibition maps the global ripple effects of a solitary man’s career, interrogating how individual bureaucracy, covert agency, and personal accountability collide against geopolitical history. Sponsored by Bottega Veneta, the installation turns the Guggenheim’s architecture into a physical timeline of surveillance, memory, and political weight.
