ENRIQUE CASTREJON, INTIMATE EMBRACES
I create measured drawings, paintings, sound pieces to investigate, question and describe what I see in varied images of pop-culture, architecture, war, senseless acts of violence, disease, fragmented bodies, and death…
MADONNA, SEX, 1992
Sex is a 1992 coffee table book written by American singer Madonna, with photography by Steven Meisel Studio and Fabien Baron. It was edited by Glenn O'Brien and published by Warner Books, Maverick and Callaway…
ZOE LEONARD, I WANT A PRESIDENT, 1992
Zoe Leonard’s oft-cited work, ‘I want a president’ was written by the artist in 1992 in response to poet Eileen Myles’s presidential bid alongside George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot…
LIS RHODES, LIGHT READING, 1978
Lis Rhodes is a filmmaker and founding member of the women’s film and video distribution company Circles, established in 1979. Many of her films employ a primarily abstract language. Rhodes’s film, Light Reading, begins in darkness. A woman’s voice reads extracts of text by the American Modernist writer Gertrude Stein…
WANGECHI MUTU, HISTOLOGY OF THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF UTERINE TUMORS, 2006
This set of twelve mixed-media works was made early in Mutu’s career, at a point when her practice was focused on collage. Drawing from disparate sources including medical journals, fashion magazines, pornography, and ethnographic texts, Mutu’s way of critiquing these publications is to cut them up and reassemble them for her own means…
DREAD SCOTT, A MAN WAS LYNCHED BY POLICE YESTERDAY, 2015
In 2015, Walter Scott fled for his life, stalked by a policeman who then cold bloodedly shot him in the back. We all saw the video and in response to this murder I made the artwork, “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday…
JUDY CHICAGO, SELECTED EARLY FEMINIST WORK, 1970-74
In the early 1970’s, Judy Chicago concentrated on fusing her abstract iconography with a new-found determination to openly express her experiences as a woman, something that had been impossible when she was in college...
NIKO KRIVANEK, SEVIER COUNTY, 2023
Sevier county is a photographic retracing of the family vacation taken by Krivanek’s mother at 10 years old. The images in the project seek freedom as Krivanek tries to reconnect with a version of his mother that exists prior to her incarceration…
SHARON HAYES, WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE, THEY SAID, 2014
I was intrigued by the question of how one shouts in text. I was engaged by the ambition and impossibility of the demand that is being made. And I was moved by the complexities that trans politics brings to the political identification with a term like “women”…
CAMERON A. GRANGER, DREAM DROP DISTANCE
In Dream Drop Distance, Granger uses the histories embodied in karaoke and soul train lines to weave us a new possible future on the other side of disaster. Two custom karaoke booths and their playlists invite visitors to undertake impromptu duets with one another, opening themselves up to the indeterminacies of encounter…
CINDY SHERMAN, SEX PICTURES, 1992
In 1992, Sherman produced a series of sex pictures using artificial body parts purchased from medical supply catalogues and typically employed for educational purposes. In this work, recalling the debased anatomical survey of a pornographic shot, detailed prostheses form a surrogate body…
SUE DE BEER, DISAPPEAR HERE, 2004
The first intercut image in the short video Disappear Here presents a sheet cake, as from a child's birthday party, showing the sentence "The recollection is a cascade of spatial metaphors" in frosting…
NYKELLE DEVIVO, THE CROSSROADS, 2013-2024
Raised in a deeply religious household and honoring the language of Afro Spiritualism, my images reflect lifetimes of reverence for the divine. Throughout the diaspora (and from antiquity to our futures), we’ve relied on the ancient technology of refracted light as a tool for divination, which, with intentionality, can be used to embody (or catch) holy spirits...
NANDITA RAMAN, WHEN MOUNTAINS RISE AND FALL LIKE WAVES
Louise Bourgeois talks of the unconscious and attempts to draw a petal on a grid. The grid and the unconscious are so far apart that a spacious ground emerges between them. This body of work finds the opposites only to discover that the distance between them is contingent on where one stands...
NJAIMEH NJIE, DID YOU GET EVERYTHING?
What do we take, and what is left behind when we leave home? With audio and visual collage, this installation takes visitors inside the collective memory of a fictional family that is leaving their home...
LAURIE ANDERSON, HABEAS CORPUS, 2015
Iconic performance artist Laurie Anderson expands upon her work fusing storytelling and technology, creating an installation and performance piece that examines lost identity, memory, and the resiliency of the human body and spirit...
DARBY ROUTTENBERG, MISS PLUS AMERICA, 2023-ONGOING
This is un ongoing project where I am to explore plus size, body positive spaces...
JESS T. DUGAN, LOOK AT ME LIKE YOU LOVE ME, 2015-2022
“In Look at me like you love me, Jess T. Dugan reflects on desire, intimacy, companionship, and the ways our identities are shaped by these experiences…
MICKALENE THOMAS, OH MICKEY, 2008
My video and painting installation Oh Mickey! (2008), was inspired by a Balthus painting called La Toilette. In the Balthus, a young girl is wearing lube socks and red slippers, standing alone in an intimate interior space. In my piece, I have a model standing in one of my installations completely nude, except for tube socks and red heels, singing Toni Basil's “Mickey” song...
JUDITH BARRY, IMAGINATION, 1991
An androgynous head is projected as if contained within a minimalist cube. Sounds of the head slowly breathing fill the space. The head is serene, waiting. Suddenly a substance pours over it from all sides, drenching it in what appears to be a bodily fluid. The spectator wants to turn away but can not, the gaze is compelled through the invocation of the scopic drive...