From September 12 to October 9, 2008, The Drawing Center will present Kathleen Henderson:?What if I?Could Draw a Bird that Could Change the World??in the Drawing Room. The Selections Fall 2008 exhibition departs from past Selections shows by featuring the work of a singular Viewing Program artist.

Henderson works in the studio with the radio on, the sounds of talking pundits and news reports filtering through her onto the page. While not a direct representation of the stories she hears, Henderson’s work ruminates on issues that infiltrate our lives and inform our respective viewpoints. Using her chosen medium of oil stick on paper, Henderson creates a sparse, tense, and energetic line to make drawings that are at turns comic, perverse, poignant, and brutal. She presents ambiguous scenarios where seemingly innocent interactions between people hold implications of violence, or where brutality lurks behind a potentially playful situation. By offering up disquieting representations of patterns of human behavior, Henderson’s work asks us to consider our own complicity in, and capacity for, violence as well as benevolence. This exhibition is curated by Nina Katchadourian, Viewing Program Curator.