A couple of weeks ago, the artist Kevin Beasley was vroom-vrooming his maroon muscle car, a 2010 Dodge Challenger, from his Queens studio to a temporary Brooklyn outpost in a cold, steady rain.

“I’m a car guy,” said the affable Mr. Beasley, who once studied automotive design. It wasn’t a hot rod engine he was racing to see, however, but a century-old cotton gin motor (75 horsepower) that is the centerpiece of his solo exhibition “Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape,” which opens on Saturday at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

As part of the show, and with the help of complicated sound equipment, he will occasionally “play” the motor like a musical instrument and has invited his own scheduled guests to do the same; they may also perform in other ways he hasn’t yet decided. In doing so, he will contrast that joyous new activity with King Cotton’s legacy of slavery and poverty in the South.

Mr. Beasley was raised in Lynchburg, Va., and members of his family still own a farm a couple of hours south, in Valentines, Va., where the crop has been grown.