IF YOU WERE IN MY BODY
JUAN BETANCURTH
CHIVAS CLEM
JOSH FAUGHT
JON KEY
ZANELE MUHOLI
JADE YUMANG
ORGANIZED BY DERIC CARNER
JUNE 22 – JULY 30, 2017
PERFORMANCE AND SCREENING THURSDAY, JULY 13TH, 6:30 PM
FIERMAN presents a group show looking at gay and queer culture through the lens of history, portraiture and confrontation. The six artists use photography, video, performance and fiber arts to address the body and explore a complex relationship between image, engagement and trace. The works on view propose a contemporary queer ethos that is intimate, impactful and grounded by multiple points of identity.
The exhibition is titled after Josh Faught’s hand-woven tapestry If You Were in my Body, We Would be Home by Now. Faught's piece contrasts moire abstraction with historic gay references and a hand lettered invitation found in the SF LGBT archive.
Colombian artist Juan Betancurth’s video uses a performance text from the late artist and gallerist Hudson (Sex Pot, presented at Against Nature, LACE 1988) to reflect on the current political climate. A live version performed by gay latino immigrants will happen in the gallery on July 13th at 6:30 PM.
Chivas Clem presents a series of photographs of Texas hustlers and day workers reflected in gilded mirrors. Clem’s lens objectifies and fragments the image of white masculinity. The roughness and availability of his subjects contrasts with the gilt and gloss that separates them from the artist and the audience.
In his portrait Queer (Violet) from the series Tension & Fragmentation, Jon Key plays with multiple layers of identity including queerness, blackness, and kinship.
Jade Yumang’s fabric sculptures are made of reprints of 1960’s and 1970’s gay erotic magazines paired with contemporaneous vintage sports fabrics. Each sculpture represents a page from My-O-My magazine which was part of a legal scandal in 1972 in New Jersey (State vs. Shapiro) where police officers, without warrant, entered a bookstore owned by Edward Shapiro and Milton Nerenberg and seized various curiosa that were deemed obscene.
Portraits of African lesbians from Zanele Muholi’s renowned series Faces and Phases confronts us with fierce images of gay and transgender individuals. Muholi asks in a statement for the series: “Is there a lesbian aesthetic or do we express our gendered, racialized and classed selves in rich and diverse ways?”