Strange
Bedfellows
BREN AHEARN & JESSE KAHN / JOE
VARISCO & QUEER LEXICON / DUTES
MILLER & STAN SHELLABARGER /
ANNIE SPRINKLE & BETH STEPHENS
/ CHRIS VARGAS & GREG YOUMANS /
E.G. CRICHTON, BARBARA MCBANE,
& SUSAN WORKING / AMOS MAC &
JULIANA HUXTABLE LADOSHA / TINA
TAKEMOTO & ANGELA ELLSWORTH /
SEAN FADER / TARA MATEIK / SARAH
HIRNEISEN / JULIE SUTHERLAND /
BILLY OCALLAGHAN / ANGIE WILSON
& AMBER STRAUS / ADRIENNE SKYE
ROBERTS / ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ
& RUDE HOUSE / POSTER/VIRUS &
JORDAN ARSENEAULT
JANUARY 16–FEBRUARY 22, 2014
Julie Sutherland
My Medusa (After Hosmer), 2013
acrylic, oil, and graphite on canvas, 21” x 26”
Strange Bedfellows
Curatorial Statement
My interest in the subject of queer collaboration began
in a series of questions: Why are there so many collaborative artworks in contemporary queer art practice?
Is queerness inherently collaborative, or is collaborative
practice inherently queer? What is to be learned about
both practices by considering them together? Definitions
are sometimes helpful when beginning this kind of inquiry,
but the interesting thing about queerness, and about
collaboration, is that both of these concepts share the
trait of being in a constant state of negotiation
and evolution.
Queerness and collaboration also share the grey area
of being a matter of identification. Postmodern and
Post-structuralist theory have provided a framework to
understand that nothing exists in a vacuum, and that
every action is a collaboration, yet not all artists define
as collaborators, or acknowledge multiple authorship.
Queer is often used as a blanket term to attempt to
encompass the range of diversity within the GLBTQQI
population, but not all homosexuals define themselves as
queer, and not all those who define as queer are homosexual. Queerness can be defined as both an expression
of non-heteronormative sexuality or gender expression,
or as a social and political stance. Queer is a noun, but it
is also a verb. To queer something is to make it strange,
to present an alternative, provide a point of rupture in
what we think we know. You don’t have to identify as queer
to actively engage in the queering of something.
The concept of “making strange,” has long been a goal
of artists, perhaps best articulated by the Russian
Formalists, who referred to the practice as ostranenie, or
estrangement. The concept estrangement is based
on the principle of repositioning language and symbol
in order to create alternative perceptions, possibilities
and interpretations for the viewer. By this definition,
ostranenie, could also be understood as queering. Fluxus,
one of the late 1960’s most international and gender
inclusive Avant Garde movements, also explored
the notion of estrangement through breaking down
distinctions of life and art. For Fluxus artists, this idea of
making strange could be applied not only to language
and symbol but also to everyday occurrence. These artists attempted to break down distinctions between
art and life as static and separate categories through
inventive publications and email art, performances,
musical concerts, and many other hybrid actions. Their
interventions destabilized conventional definitions of
art in much the same way that many of the artists
participating in Strange Bedfellows use their own lives,
relationships, and bodies as sites for artistic and
political intervention.
1
Jason Fritz Michael
Falling in Love with Chris & Greg, 2009
colored pencil (left)
Tara Mateik
Diana Ross is Dorothy (with Rob Cohen,
Barry Gordy and Diana Ross), 2013
video (right)
Collaboration and queerness can be
spaces of social, political, personal,
and artistic revolution. In presenting
alternatives to the singular author
paradigm, collaborative practice like
queer politics can be read as critique
of the systems of hegemony, in this
case capitalistic and individualistic
notions of authorship.
Collaboration and queerness can be spaces of social,
political, personal, and artistic revolution. In presenting
alternatives to the singular author paradigm, collaborative practice like queer politics can be read as critique of
the systems of hegemony, in this case capitalistic and
individualistic notions of authorship. So, is there something inherently queer about collaboration? Yes and
no. It’s possible to theorize that collaborative practice
positions itself in radical opposition to commodification
and traditional concepts of authorship and identity, and
is therefor queering the singular artist/author paradigm,
working in critical opposition. There are many reasons
for collaboration including the logistical.
2
Is there something inherently collaborative about queerness? In this show, I aim to present queerness as both
an expression of non-heteronormative sexuality or gender
expression, a political stance, and a possibility of a life
lived outside of, and perhaps in direct opposition to,
“normal.” In order to invert something, you are implying
your relationship with it. You must hold it and relate to it
before you flip it on its head. Queers are constantly in
conversation with their opposite. Queer only exists if there
is a normal. Non-normativity only exists in opposition to
normativity. Operating at odds means operating in relation
or collaboration with the inverse. So by this definition
it can be theorized that there is, in fact, something
inherently collaborative about queerness.
But that’s just in theory. In practice, queers have long
relied on collaboration for a variety of reasons, not the
least of which have been physical and emotional safety
in numbers, or political presence. The artists that I
present in this iteration of Strange Bedfellows range in
their queer identities, politics, strategies, and reasons
for collaboration.
I’ve attempted to present a range of strategies and
situations to explore the roles I see collaboration playing
in contemporary queer art practice including the personal, performative, and political. I conducted personal
interviews with the artists in this exhibition to get a better
sense of how they see collaborative practice in relation
to their idea of queerness, and how that manifests
in their art.
For artist Adrienne Skye Roberts, this spirit of social and
political critique is inherent in her definition of queerness,
and is reflected in the way she merges her art practice
with political organizing. She says, “Queerness, as a
critique of systems of power, speaks back to the capitalist
fantasy of the individualist and everything we are taught
about isolating ourselves in our work or our nuclear family
or when we need help the most. This is opposite of what
so many of us—queers, radical thinkers, many marginalized communities—know to be true: that we rely on each
other, that we need each other every step of the way
for our survival, our resistance and our joy.”
In acknowledgment of the long lineage of collaborative
political organizing around the rights of GLBTQQI people,
Strange Bedfellows includes work representative of a new
generation of AIDS activism. Jordan Arseneault’s work,
Silence = Sex, is presented alongside his poem of the
same title, and is in direct conversation with the iconic
ACT UP slogan “Silence = Death.” The work was featured
in a poster series distributed by the Canadian AIDS
action group poster/VIRUS.
Roberts and Arseneault utilize the visual language of
protest, but “critiquing systems of power,” can take many
guises. Queer activism and environmentalism overlap
in the work of Annie Sprinkle & Elizabeth Stephens. Their
performative public marriages link love, politics, and
environmentalism by queering the marriage ritual. Working with over 2000 collaborators, their weddings feature
performers, artists and sex workers in an experimental
public performance based on the tropes of traditional
western matrimony.
Performance works, especially at the scale of Annie &
Beth’s projects, often rely on multiple authorship for the
logistical production details. However the collaborative
nature of this type of work is not always acknowledged.
For Strange Bedfellows Alexander Hernandez presents
an installation that brings the backstage culture of drag
dressing rooms to center stage. By inviting audience
participation in the preparation for performance, Hernandez shines light on the often overlooked skill sharing that
takes place, including his own role creating costuming
for the drag house, RUDE House.
3
4
In order to invert something, you are
implying your relationship with it.
You must hold it and relate to it before
you flip it on its head.
Juliana Huxtable LaDosha, who collaborated with photographer Amos Mac on a series of photos for the exhibition
describes her own experience of being a part of House
of LaDosha. “They represent the beauty of queerness in
many ways, because we are each other’s family in the
most real sense and I wouldn’t be able to really face the
difficulty of the world If I didn’t have my sisters with me.”
The need for love and support as a matter of survival
has long led queers to build communities and networks
outside of their given families. When Angela Ellsworth
was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, she began
sending her friend and artistic collaborator Tina Takemoto
photos from across the country documenting the effects
of treatment on her body. In efforts to be both a witness
and a support system, Tina began staging “rhyming”
photographs of her own body recreating Angela’s photos.
Ellsworth credits this hopeful and empathetic connection
with her recovery, saying, “Ultimately, I believe that
making the images and performing together really did
lead to my health. My experience with cancer was being
heard and seen. It made it seem worthwhile because
my experience became much more than just this awful
personal ordeal that I was trying to endure. During that
time, my relationship to my family was pretty strained and
complicated. But in our collaboration, I was supported
and I didn’t feel forgotten.”
Artist billy ocallaghan has used his artwork as a means
of connecting with and engaging his aging mother. When
she moved in with him as a result of memory loss, he had
her assist in the production of his zines and started a
side business with the cards they made together. Of the
collaboration he says, “I think my having something for her
to do was critical, at times, to her making the transition to
living with us over the past 8 months. We’re much closer
now, and it is still very much a work in process.”
E.G. Crichton and Barbara McBane also used their work
to connect with their parents, though for these artists, it
is in elegy. Crichton and McBane collaborated with Susan
Working to create an installation connecting the objects
Amos Mac with Juliana Huxtable la Dosha
Untitled (Tree), 2009
Photographic C-print
and writings of Crichton’s recently deceased father with
the archive of Veronica Friedman. Friedman’s archive
is housed at the GLBT Historical Society, and was matched to McBane through Crichton’s project LINEAGE, which
she presented as the society’s first artist in residence.
McBane did not fully engage with the archive until the
passing of her own mother, saying, “Veronica’s archive had
a structural element of elegy that made it an irresistible
vehicle for my own displaced mourning.” Collaborating on
many levels, these artists are engaged not only in their
own personal connections, but also in relation to the
archive itself—collaborating with the past, and queering
its present impact.
Joe Varisco is creating an archive of his own entitled
QUEER LEXICON. Working with Chicago based queer
artists, Varisco conducts audio interviews and presents
them alongside an intimate portrait series. Varisco
invites viewers to engage with contemporary Chicago
queer culture makers, and collaborates with his
community to present their stories and experiences in
the gallery setting.
Collaborating with history and queering the archive is
a major tenet of Julie Sutherland’s work. In a series
of paintings addressing the life of former first lady Rose
Cleveland, Sutherland blurs the lines between fact and
fiction in her work. She says, “I realize its not consensual
collaboration, but even still, when I’m working on the
paintings—from this source material—I’m spending time
with it. It does feel like I know their story. It’s my interpretation, so I put a lot of myself into it, but I’m trying to
do right by her. I’m also collaborating with whoever built
the archive, collected items for it, donated to it… I love
the thought of being indebted to people because of your
shared obsessions.” One of the painting in the series,
“Cleveland,” combines the portraits of President Grover
Cleveland with both of his first ladies; his sister Rose, and
his young wife Frances. In creating these intersubjective
portraits, Sutherland queers the historical associations
around Cleveland’s legacy and brings the forgotten
histories of the first ladies to light.
5
Sean Fader
I Want To Put You On, Dad, 2007
digital C-print, 20” x 36” (left)
Jordan Arseneault and Poster/VIRUS
Silence=Sex, 2012
paper (right)
Tara Matiek also utilizes performance and impersonation
in his practice. In staged live recreations, using archival
audio, Mateik recreates historical screen tests and interviews. Collaborating with impersonators of queer icons
Diana Ross and Judy Garland, his performances play
with personification, identification, and concepts of home.
Mateik cast himself in the roles director and producer
mirroring his actual role in providing the creative framework for each performance, but he acknowledges his
dependence on his collaborators saying, “I created the
structure and the content—but it can’t exist without
the impersonators. And each person’s interpretation just
becomes part of a larger conversation.”
Sean Fader’s work also visually merges identities, queering portraits and examining the concept of intersubjective
identity. His photographic works present similarly layered
identities in portraits combining his own head expertly
merged with the bodies of friends and family in zippered
“costumes.” He says, “I create photographs of impossible
performances. These performances never occurred in
one single frame. The I Want To Put You On, series is the
compression of a three-hour conversation into a single
image. It’s about the performance, the negotiation, the in
between messiness, all of this stuff that happens between
us and that compresses this three hour time into a
single image.”
6
Bren Ahearn and Jesse M. Kahn are engaged in a
collaborative project called Crafty Faggots, that has similar
goals of using a predefined structure to create a piece
larger than the sum of its parts. In a sort of cross-national
sewing circle, the artists set parameters including scale
and time, for each piece. Each artist began his work on
one sampler, drawing from his own personal iconography,
and then shipped the Aida cloth across the country to the
collaborator to finish. In these works Ahearn and Kahn
both work with wrestler imagery, a common theme in each
of their individual practices. The overlap of their visual
language led to two complete samplers playing with the
line between homosexual innuendo and heteronormative
masculine expressions of violence. Their collaborative
practice challenges gender normativity and queers the
concept of craft and sport.
Angie Wilson and Amber Straus are dedicated to
challenging enforcement and gender expression in their
work, and in their lives. When the artists decided to grow
their family, their creativity and anti-corporate politics,
informed how they decided to bring a new life into the
world. Straus and Wilson created a personal account of
their process in a zine called, A DIY Guide to Babymaking:
Queers are constantly in conversation with their opposite. Queer only exists
if there is a normal. Non-normativity only exists in opposition to normativity.
Operating at odds means operating in relation or collaboration with
the inverse. So by this definition it can be theorized that there is, in fact,
something inherently collaborative about queerness.
This is How We Did It, to empower feminist mothers, both
queer and queer allied. Wilson and Straus’ work reclaims
the power of childbirth and the determination of gender
identification outside of hegemonic and capitalist structures, and blurs the line between life and art.
Husbands Dutes Miller & Stan Shellabarger are also
engaged in blurring the lines between their lives together,
and their art. Their seventeen-year collaborative practice
challenges the tension of connection and separation
in their relationship. For Strange Bedfellows they present
photographs of a performance in which the artists dug
graves next to one another, with a connecting tunnel so
that they could hold hands as they lay together.
In taking their own romantic relationship as subject,
Chris and Greg are also queering the personal. Chris
Vargas & Greg Youmans “play” themselves and explore
the dynamics of a trans and cisgender relationship in
their serial sitcom Falling in Love with Chris and Greg.
Vargas reflects, “I do think there is something natural or
obvious about collaborating with one’s lover, boyfriend,
or same-sex life partner. I’m referring to the energy
that’s there in the beginning of the relationship that’s
pure magic, and for many it feels right to harness and
direct it toward something outside of yourself.” Perhaps
that is what all art aims to do—to direct energy outside
of oneself into something larger that can be shared.
This exhibition offers a multiplicity of perspective
on the queer experience and a variety of strategies for
collaboration including political organizing, empathy,
intersubjective identity, appropriation, familial relations,
and romantic partnership. I am inspired by the creative
ways that these artists engage in their lives and practice.
It’s an honor to share their work in this exhibition.
—Amy Cancelmo
7
ADRIENNE
SKYE ROBERTS
Adrienne Skye Roberts is an artist, activist, educator,
writer, and curator based in Oakland, California.
For Strange Bedfellows, Roberts has created a new piece
titled, It is our duty to fight / It is our duty to win / We must
love each other and protect each other / We have nothing to
loose but our chains, based on an Assata Shakur chant
that the California Coalition for Women Prisoners
says before and after most actions.
Roberts collaborated with four fellow coalition members,
Windy Click, Misty Rojo, Mary Campbell, and Samantha
Rogers, all prison survivors, on an installation featuring
hand painted signs and audio based on her interviews and
recordings from the recent Chowchilla Freedom Rally
that they organized together. For the interviews with her
collaborators, Roberts asked three questions: “How did
you survive prison? What do you need to survive now that
you are out of prison? And what does a world without
mass incarceration look like?”
Roberts’s hand painted signs based on quotes from each
interview connect her to each individual’s cause, taking it
on as her own, and giving their voices a haunting
and palpable presence.
8
It is our duty to fight/ It is our duty to win/ We must love each other and protect each other/ We have nothing to lose but our chains, 2013
watercolor, acrylic on mat board, audio
9
BREN AHEARN
& JESSE M. KAHN
Crafty Faggots is a collaborative project including textile
artists Bren Ahearn, Greg Der Ananian, and Jesse Kahn.
The artists are engaging in a cross-national sewing circle,
in which they rotate fabric pieces to complete several
multi-authored embroidered artworks.
Craft is a term often used to designate high from low
arts; utilitarian item from fine art. It also has a long
history of being a social experience, in which communities came together to work on joint projects for single
purpose, like a quilting or sewing bee.
Quilting Bees became popular in the 19th century a
social gatherings and skillshare opportunities, the final
products of which were often used to commemorate
special events. Sewing circles consisted of groups of
women who met regularly to sew, often for charitable
10
Collaboration #2 (1JK, 2BA), 2013
cotton, polyester, 12” x 12”
Collaboration #2 (1BA, 2JK, 3BA), 2013
cotton, polyester, 12” x 12” (bottom)
causes or community needs. This term was also used
to describe the relationships of closeted lesbian and
bisexual film actresses such as Marlene Dietrich in the
early 20th Century. Embroidery in particular is often
associated with feminine handiwork, and therefore
the perfect medium for this group of artists to explore
issues of gender and the normalization of violence
in masculinity.
The first iteration of this group collaboration, shown for
Strange Bedfellows, is two collaborative samplers crafted
by Ahearn and Kahn. With allotted parameters of scale
and time, each artist began his work on one sampler,
drawing from his own personal iconography, and then
shipped the Aida cloth across the country to the
collaborator to finish.
SARAH
HIRNEISEN
My Sister Natalie (detail of installation), 2009
Fabric, embroidery, altered photographs, brass, silver, 60” x 120”
In My Sister Natalie, artist Sarah Hirneisen has revised
her family history in a collaboration with her transgender
sister Natalie. By modifying family photos and gendering
toys and other childhood ephemera, Sarah is re-envisioning Natalie’s childhood, and transforming her own family
memories, to fit who she now knows her sister to be.
This project raises interesting questions of authorship,
as Sarah is in a sense appropriating her sister’s transition
experience for her own art. Yet, the piece was done as a
collaboration, and with Natalie’s support. Natalie shared
many specific memories with Sarah, which were used to
recreate her experience. The recreation of a family portrait
from their aunt’s wedding casts both Sarah and Natalie
as flower girls. Sarah recalls, “I found out that was a
pivotal moment for Natalie in that she desperately wished
she had been the flower girl and worn the dress. She
shared with me that she would try on that dress (which
was kept in my dress up bin) when I was not home.”
11
ALEXANDER
HERNANDEZ &
RUDE HOUSE
12
Alexander Hernandez explores the collaborative nature
of drag culture in Haute Mess, a performative, site-specific
installation with RUDE House. RUDE House, which
stands for Raging Unified Drag Ensemble, began in early
2013, as a collaborative effort to help Amaya Dorable
(Jason Dominic) with her first performance. Recognizing
the strength in collectivity and skill sharing, the house
now consists of a core group of six artists and performers,
Ben Rodriguez (Jenna Talia), Mitch Laffins (Darla Gayle),
Eric Aviles (Vanity), Myla Baker (Cara Couture), Alexander
Hernandez, and Korey Luna.
Much like a sewing circle, backstage preparations for
drag performances are community driven spaces
of creative, technical, and social support. RUDE House
has performed at various venues throughout the San
Francisco Bay Area including The Café, DNA Lounge, The
Lookout, and Pa’ina Lounge, but this is the first time
they have invited the public to engage in the process.
For Strange Bedfellows, Hernandez and RUDE House have
brought the little seen world of backstage drag culture
to center stage inviting visitors to kiki with the house and
engage with the queens trading makeup and costuming
advice before the culminating performance.
Costume from Haute Mess 003, 2013
performance/ephemera
13
AMOS MAC & JULIANA
HUXTABLE LADOSHA
Amos Mac is a contemporary trans-male photographer best known for Original Plumbing
magazine, a self-published trans-male quarterly. With his project Translady Fanzine,
Mac ruptures notions of gender and the role of alternative publications. Each issue features
one trans–woman as artistic collaborator in photo-essays created for the publication’s
centerfold. The presentation of feminine-otherness in a format based on teen magazines
and celebrity fan circulations challenges preconceptions about the media and of the
sitter. For the second installation of Translady Fanzine, Mac partnered with Juliana Huxtable
LaDosha, an artist, writer, and member of New York’s infamous drag house,
House of LaDosha.
In after-hours photo shoots, Amos Mac and Juliana Huxtable LaDosha shot a series
of photos in the offices of what would soon be LaDosh’s ex-employer, New York’s American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). LaDosha met a good deal of liberal racism and transphobia
in the two and a half years that she worked at the ACLU. In reaction to this and her decision
to leave her position, LaDosha and Mac came together to create a series of photos
reclaiming that space. In bold photos shown alongside her essay about the transphobia
she faced in a “liberal” and “progressive” office setting, this project reclaims the
commodification of trans bodies on the artist’s own terms.
Untitled (Mailroom), 2013
photographic C-print, 20” x 30”
14
15
E.G. CRICHTON, BARBARA
MCBANE , & SUSAN WORKING
As the first Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society, E.G. Crichton
has been connecting the personal contents of historical archives to contemporary
artists. Her project, LINEAGE: Matchmaking in the Archive, creates a framework for artists to directly engage with the archives and respond in their chosen media.
When Crichton asked Barbara McBane to participate in LINEAGE, she offered the
archive of Veronica Friedman, a slim box that preserves a year and a half of Friedman’s
life, from 1979 to 1981. The archive is slim in its records as Friedman only lived for
five years after her transition, dying in 1986 at the age of 41. It wasn’t until the death
of her own mother, that McBane was able to fully immerse herself in Friedman’s
archive, as a sort of elegy to both women.
Crichton, having also recently gone through the experience of parental loss, with the
death of her father Oliver, dove into another archival investigation. Exploring documents
and ephemera in the same way she explored the GLBT archives.
With the expansion of the LINEAGE project, Crichton created connections between the
archives in her mind, examining impossible relationships and exchanges in lives
that would have never overlapped, and in doing so connected her father’s experience
to Friedman’s. For Strange Bedfellows McBane and Crichton created a dialogue and
relationship between these two archives.
“So boring!—but not you, Nature!” (Oliver and Veronica), 2013
video, sound, light, box vitrine, napkins, photo prints
16
17
JULIE SUTHERLAND
Julie Sutherland’s Union series has offered a queering of American history and a
blurring of gender lines. By combining portraits of a President and their respective
First Lady from the Library of Congress, she challenges the role of first ladies in
contemporary understandings of history and blurs the lines between fact and fiction.
For Strange Bedfellows, Sutherland has queered a particularly interesting presidential
pairing: Grover Cleveland, and his first lady, and sister, Rose Cleveland. In mining
the archive and queering history, Sutherland came across this odd couple that
had a much queerer history than she anticipated.
According to the artist’s research, Rose Cleveland was an author, academic, a fan of
George Eliot, and in love with a woman named Evangeline Whipple for many years.
When her unmarried brother became President of the United States she was asked
to move to Washington and act as his First Lady. Acting as First Lady for about a year
and a half, she didn’t ‘fit in,’ and left the post once Grover married his ridiculously
younger bride, Frances.
In a series of works addressing these multifaceted histories, Sutherland has woven
a narrative of longing, propriety, patriotism, love, and illness.
Covers, 2013
acrylic and graphite on canvas, 16” x 20”
18
19
JORDAN ARSENEAULT
& POSTER/VIRUS
A Day Without Art was piloted by Visual AIDS, the same organization that popularized
the red ribbons associated with AIDS awareness in 1989, as a day of mourning. In 1997,
Visual AIDS turned the emphasis from closing down art spaces to enabling more
artistic interventions by artists living with and working to fight HIV/AIDS. The brackets
on With(out) were added in 1997 to highlight the work of these activists and artists.
In a continuation of that vision, Aids Action Now has launched two poster/Virus
interventions at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, in 2011 and 2012, and covered
the streets of Toronto with images and text designed by artists living with HIV in the
21st century.
Jordan Arseneault’s poster for 2012 poster/VIRUS project is featured in Strange
Bedfellows. Arseneault appropriated the original imagery of ACT UP’s slogan “Silence
= Death”, and tweaked it to “Silence = Sex”, in order to more accurately reflect his
personal experiences with disclosure and rejection.
Silence = Sex, 2012
paper, 18” x 12”
20
Silence = S e x
The criminalization of HiV+ people perpetuates stigma and prevents prevention. HiV+ people are often caught in a “catch 22,”
wherein disclosure is required by law, but often leads to immediate rejection. inform yourself: overcome stigma and get laid!
SilenceSexPoster.indd 1
12-09-16 11:32 PM
21
TARA MATEIK
Tara Mateik is a New York based artist whose video and
performance work explores notions of home, gender, and
queer iconography.
For Strange Bedfellows, Mateik presents Friends of
Dorothy, a new body of work, deconstructing the myths
of home and identity through investigating The Wizard
of Oz, and The Wiz. In staged live recreations, Mateik uses
archival audio to recreate historical screen tests and
interviews. Collaborating with impersonators of queer
icons Diana Ross and Judy Garland, his performances
play with personification and identification of heroine
Dorothy Gale.
22
Love Hangover featuring the Tin Man,
a character study, 2011
video
TINA TAKEMOTO &
ANGELA ELLSWORTH
Tina Takemoto and Angela Ellsworth met in 1991 while
pursing graduate degrees at Rutgers University. Both
went into the program as painters, but became interested
in the artistic intervention in everyday life. Ellsworth and
Takemoto started performing together under the name
Her/She Senses (initially with Jennifer Parker), within
their first year at Rutgers, and later organized For-Play, a
monthly event featuring time-based performances by
students and local artists.
However, when Ellsworth was diagnosed with Hodgkins
Lymphoma in 1993, the content of their collaboration
shifted. At this time, the artists were living in different
cities, so in order to share the experience, and under-
Imag(in)ed Malady: Neck Marks, 1994
photographic print, 17.25” x 10.25”
Imag(in)ed Malady: Blown Veins/
Jelly Hand, 1994
photographic print, 17.25” x 10.25”
stand it more fully herself, Ellsworth began sending
Takemoto photos documenting the effects of treatment
on her body. Takemoto began staging “rhyming”
photographs of her own body in staged recreations of
Ellsworth’s photos. In this series of “rhyming” photographs, the artists documented the physical and
emotional ramifications the disease was having on each
of them. The trauma of Ellsworth’s illness affected both
artists in very intense and very different ways. The
mirroring photographs began as a way for both artists
to try to understand the confusing dynamics of a
sick/well experience.
23
ANGIE WILSON
& AMBER STRAUS
When artists Angie Wilson and Amber Straus decided to
grow their family by raising a child together, their creativity
and anti-corporate politics informed how they decided
to bring a new life into the world. Choosing to avoid the
overly medicalized conception process often associated
and encouraged in lesbian pregnancy, Wilson and Straus
engaged in DIY babymaking: insemination and childbirth
at home without medical intervention.
The artists relied heavily on the text of the now out
of print, The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception,
Pregnancy & Birth, written by Stephanie Brill of Maia
Midwifery and Preconception Services. With an interest
24
Questioning, 2013
fabric, ink
in empowering feminist mothers, both queer and queer
allied, Straus and Wilson created a personal account of
their process in a zine called, A DIY Guide to Babymaking:
This is How We Did It.
For Strange Bedfellows, the zine is available for visitors to
take, and shown alongside a mobile Straus made as well
as the first iteration of Wilson’s textile project Questioning,
which consists of a series of onesies. Like many queer
(and non-queer) parents, Wilson and Straus grappled
with issues surrounding gender enforcement and gender
expression, even before their daughter was born.
CHRIS VARGAS &
GREG YOUMANS
Chris Vargas and Greg Youmans met in the Digital Media
department at UC Santa Cruz in 2006, where Youmans
was Vargas’s teaching assistant for a film theory class.
They started their romantic relationship and collaborative
art practice a year and a half later.
Their video series Falling in Love With Chris and Greg is
an odd couple style sitcom in which Youmans plays “the
cisgendered gay-liberal half to Vargas’s transgendered
queer-radical half.” In short episodes and “specials,”
Vargas and Youmans “play” themselves, addressing
issues that came up in their relationship and in the queer
political arena including gay marriage, pregnant men,
and Proposition 8.
Falling in Love… with Chris and Greg,
Season Two, Series Finale: “Cheesecakes and Memories,” 2013
video
For Strange Bedfellows, Vargas and Youmans will be
presenting the final episode of Falling in Love with
Chris and Greg. This episode, styled after the montage
finales of The Golden Girls and Seinfeld, addresses
the upcoming changes in both artists’ lives, including
a move to upstate New York, where Youmans will be
taking a position as Visiting Adjunct Professor at Colgate,
and Vargas’s recent awards and accolades.
25
ANNIE SPRINKLE
& BETH STEPHENS
Despite the controversy surrounding same sex marriage, artists Annie Sprinkle
and Elizabeth Stephens have been married sixteen times. They’ve married
each other legally in Canada, married their community, the Earth, the sea, the
rocks, the moon, the snow, and many other natural elements in extravagant
and colorful performances. In taking the guise of a heteronormative structure,
Sprinkle & Stephens have radically shifted the notion of marital union to
include all matter of personal and environmental connection.
Working with over 2000 collaborators, their weddings feature performers,
artists, and sex workers in an experimental public performance based on the
tropes of traditional western matrimony. For Strange Bedfellows, Annie and
Beth present an audio-visual installation featuring simultaneous screenings
of their first seven weddings.
26
We do!, 2004 to 2011 and 2013
video on digital frame
27
SEAN FADER
Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey—a conservative suburb of
New York—Sean Fader was always active in the performing
arts. Attending both Northwestern and The New School
University, then pursuing his career by performing on and
off Broadway, Fader’s history as an actor informs his fine
art practice. He attributes his performative background
and his lack of formal art training (until receiving his MFA
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) for his lack
of reverence for the “truth” in photography.
28
I Want To Put You On, Raini, 2007
digital C-print, 20” x 36”, (left)
I Want To Put You On, Bryan, 2007
digital C-print, 20”x 36”, (right)
Each photo in the 2007 series I Want to Put You On depicts
Fader’s likeness, namely his head, expertly merged in
Photoshop with the bodies of his various subjects. A zipper
down the center of each body is left slightly open at the
collarbone exposing Fader’s hairy chest and neck rising
out of the “costume.” Fader selects his subjects based on
their bearing qualities that he covets. His “trying on” of
these bodies then is an exploration of those traits within
himself. Fader begins by photographing his subject in their
own environment, and then in an interesting role reversal,
has each subject photograph and direct him in
acting as or “being” the subject.
29
MILLER &
SHELLABARGER
Untitled 1 (Grave, Basel, Switzerland), 2008
archival inkjet print in artist-made
pine frame with UV plexi, 26.5” x 20.5”
For Strange Bedfellows, artistic and romantic partners,
Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger present documentation of a 2010 performance in Basel Switzerland. For
this work, the husbands each dug side by side graves in
relation to their body shape, and ultimately created a
small tunnel between the two graves to allow the artists
to hold hands. Inspired by the works of Jacques Derrida,
The Gift of Death, and The Work of Mourning, which explore
the anticipation of loss in any relationship, the artists
create an impossible reality in this performance: the
ability to remain connected, even in death.
Many of Miller and Shellabarger’s collaborative works
deal with the embodiment of connection and inevitable
separation, including actually stitching their clothing
together and cutting the threads in, Untitled (Sewing),
which the artists will perform at the A+D Gallery during
the opening reception.
Often employing craft techniques and utilizing their
masculine, bearded appearance to complicate and confront stereotypes, the artists are adamant that the work
is not politically motivated or exclusively about queer
relationships. Their performances reflect the universal
challenges of any sort of relationship, and visualize the
connective threads and gaps in human connection.
30
JOE VARISCO
& QUEER LEXICON
Joe Varisco is Chicago-based queer documentarian and
producer who has been active in building community
through his projects since 2009. For Strange Bedfellows,
Varisco presents a selection of interviews and photos
from Queer Lexicon, an oral history series he piloted in
2012 which documents and archives the lives of
Chicago’s queer creative community.
The subjects of Varisco’s interviews and photos in the
presentation include Jackie Boyd director of Chicago’s
Queer Choir and co-founder of Project Fierce Chicago,
a grassroots agency developing housing for trans youth;
H. Melt author of SIRvival in the Second City: Transqueer
Chicago Poems and writer for Original Plumbing; and
Queer Lexicon: An Oral History Series a JRV MAJESTY Production, 2013
framed photographs and sound
fashion designer GNAT (Gnat Brilmyer) Point Scholar,
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s The Walk
Fellowship recipient and Bernhard Willhelm intern.
Varisco’s work speaks to the power of collaboration in
producing events and developing and disseminating
culture through the queer community. His interviews are
available online, and serve to connect queer artists,
writers, performers and scholars, in a living, evolving,
archive of contemporary culture.
31
BILLY OCALLAGHAN
billy ocallaghan’s most recent projects center around
the sun, more specifically, the rainbow hues that are
“evidence that life is still possible on our planet.” When
his mother moved in with him and his partner, as a safety
precaution in light of her declining memory, ocallaghan
sought ways of engaging his still mentally and physically
active mother. Several years prior, his mother helped
make the zines he was producing by doing the initial cuts
on publications from across the country. Faced with a new
living situation, having her assist him in his production
seemed a clear next step as they negotiated their
life together.
yet another gift from our sun, 2013 print,
accordion zine template, 18” x 24”
One of the first notecard images they made was of a
photo of a rainbow ocallaghan had taken in their home,
another was the same image inverted. “My mom cut the
first sample and loved how it looked. I folded and bound
it into an accordion and flattened it in a book press
overnight. In the process, I discovered that this form I had
made could be flipped through like a flipbook without
a spine, it was a rainbow slinky of sorts, it could be played
like an accordion. It was magical. And, like an accordion,
it could also open up into a large zine. I was very
excited (as was my mom).”
For Strange Bedfellows, ocallaghan presents a rainbow
accordion fold poster print that functions as a template
for the zine, with instructions for building and playing
the accordion.
32
About the Curator Amy Cancelmo received her MA
in Queer Art History from San Francisco State University
in 2011, and a BFA in painting from Syracuse University
in 2004. Her current creative pursuits focus on curatorial
practice, research, and writing.
Cancelmo is currently employed as the Exhibitions
and Events Coordinator for Root Division, a visual arts
non-profit located in San Francisco. In her position
she annually works with over 500 artists to produce 12
monthly exhibitions. In addition, she has been curating
solo and group exhibitions of Root Division Studio
Artists and Affiliates at offsite venues such as the ODC
Theater and the Spare Change Artist’s Space since
2011. As a curator, Cancelmo is interested in presenting
work that addresses current social issues, and creates
opportunities for dialogue, learning, and critical
engagement by all participants.
About Strange Bedfellows Strange Bedfellows is
a nationally travelling exhibition exploring collaborative
practice in queer art making. The project is fiscally
sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center, and was first
presented at Root Division, San Francisco, as part of
the National Queer Arts Festival in June of 2013.
The exhibition then travelled to the Samek Art Gallery
at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania from
September through November 2013.
It is being presented at the Averill & Bernard Leviton
A+D Gallery at Columbia College Chicago as the
sponsored exhibition of the Queer Caucus for the Arts
for the College Art Association Conference. Strange
Bedfellows will continue to travel and evolve, including
regionally specific collaborative projects in each new
presentation, and raising new questions about the role
collaboration plays in queer life, and artistic practice.
Upcoming venues include the Handwerker Gallery at
Ithaca College, New York.
To learn more about Strange Bedfellows visit:
strangebedfellowsexhibition.wordpress.com
33
A+D
art
+ d es i gn
AVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON
GALLERY HOURS
A+D GALLERY
TUESDAY – SATURDAY
619 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE
11AM – 5PM
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605
312 369 8687
THURSDAY
COLUM.EDU/ADGALLERY
11AM – 8PM
This exhibition is sponsored by the Art + Design Department at Columbia
College Chicago. This exhibition is partially supported by a grant from the
Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.