Chitra Ganesh, Rashaad Newsome, Remote Intimacies, and Artist Fellowship talks
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art announces fall 2020 programs and exhibitions, spanning physical installations and exhibitions, virtual performances and public programs, supporting queer art in all its diversity and depth.
Remote Intimacies is a series of performances commissioned and co-organized with the ONE Archives at USC. The invited artists explore how to sustain intimacy in these highly mediated times, and how to imagine opportunities for communion across temporal and geographic distances. This series of performances and encounters takes its title from scholar Karen Tongson’s theory on the powerful resonance of shared consumption and their capacity to “bring people, things, and concepts together, even if space and time dictates their dispersal and isolation.” On October 7, Brontez Purnell inaugurates the series, followed by Karen Finley on October 28 (in collaboration with the Museum of Art and Design), Joseph Liatela on November 18, and Mikki Yamashiro (Candy Pain) on December 16.
The series will extend monthly through spring 2021, with artists including Young Joon Kwak and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.
LLM’s fourth annual QUEERPOWER facade exhibition opens on October 18 with a site-specific commission by artist Chitra Ganesh, wrapping the exterior windows of the Museum with imagery of queer protest, survival, knowledge, and joy. Ganesh’s drawings shift temporality, grounding possible futures in our present moment, including images of those trans and gender-nonconforming people who have been violently murdered this year, as well as historic queer and trans activists, and those lost to COVID-19.
This installation extends the artist’s ongoing commitment to femininity and social formations that are overlooked or excluded from mainstream discourses around queerness and race.
On October 20, the Museum will hold its first virtual Gala, honoring Chitra Ganesh; lesbian nightlife producer and activist Wanda Acosta; philanthropists Jason Bauer and Juan Mangiarotti, and the Museum’s newest Trustee, Kyle Ferari-Muñoz and his partner Henry Muñoz for their extraordinary generosity of time, energy, and support. The virtual event includes an IRL-made underwater theme featuring works by artist Greg Corbino, awards distributed to the honorees by artist and former Leslie-Lohman Artist Fellow Max Colby, and a film premiere by artist Brontez Purnell titled 100 Boyfriends Mixtape/ Episode 3: HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION. Set in an urban fairytale, the film confronts past entanglements with a depersonalized video diary and found audio.
In late-October and November, the third cohort of the Museum’s vibrant Artist Fellowship will culminate in a series of four virtual public programs. Each event will feature a short artists’ talk by three Fellows, followed by a discussion with a curator, art historian, or writer. Since its inception, the Artist Fellowship, led by director Ela Troyano, has centered queer artists of color from a wide range of cultural experience.
The presenting artists from the 2019-2020 cohort include Sarah E. Brook, Evan Paul English and Sarp Kerem Yavuz on October 26; Aranxta Araujo, Heather Marie Scholl, and Fernano Vieira on November 2; Arisleyda Dilone, Le’Andra LeSeur, and Alison Viana on November 9; and Stefa Marin Alarcon, Muse Dodd, and Heather Lynn Johnson on November 16.
On December 1, World AIDS Day, the Museum will launch a major new project with Rashaad Newsome. The tripartite commission includes a new film to be screened publicly and online on the Museum’s website; an installation of the artist’s iconic wallpaper in the remaining Museum windows; and a global virtual event that will gather queer, Black, trans people in celebration and connection.
Register here for Remote Intimacies: Brontez Purnell.
Register here for the Gala.
For more information on these and future programs, register for our emails on our website and follow us on Instagram.
