Amid a semiquincentennial celebration marked by fierce tension and harsh partisan division, in the country's current state, born of its fire and breathing life into its discord, comes the newest body of work from Taryn Simon. An artist known for photography centered on storytelling, portraying the unseen, and depicting a vision of calculated veracity, Father Country I do Love You details the story of an American federal agent through 42 multipart chapters over a decade in the making. 

The exhibition officially opened to the public at the Guggenheim Museum and will run through mid-March 2027. The opening reception was lively, with a guest list ranging from film, television, writing, and the art world, all gathered to bask in the history that Simon is both outlining and making as the first gallery exhibition spanning the full Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda to be dedicated to a sole artist's new body of work in photo and video, the largest debut of work ever staged at the museum. 

Through the subject's devotion to the American people and Constitution, happenstance of duty, devotion, and loss, the unnamed agent acts as an intermediary, and the storytelling develops over decades of his life as he takes actions that impact the lives of others unrelated and unknown to him, outside of the country and within, having been a witness to events that Simon builds into a greater picture of a single message. Topics featured range from Hollywood, impeachment, child soldiers, Stings and entrapments, mass shootings, and poison. 

With a decade of work comes an intense imagery cultivated by an exhibition of this scale. There is a necessity in depicting such a stark and inimitable perspective of the country, seemingly tied to the country's recent landmark birthday. The collection is dedicated to her father, whose full story Simon was never able to uncover after his diagnosis of Alzheimers. Though his words live on in the essence of the entirety: “But America is the best story on earth, if you could find someone to tell it,”. 

And so she does: A Flat Stanley in Saudi Arabia, searching the rubble of the US embassy bombing in Nairobi, dissecting hard drives and luring mayors into cocaine stings, and even an audio guide for the project that features a narration from Jodie Foster and an AI-generated voice clone of Simon's father.