Johnny Depp
Pride Week is finally here!
With events happening throughout the next 7 days and into next month, there's a kaleidoscope of exciting art exhibitions, performances and activities to celebrate unbridled LGBTQIA+ creative expression. We've gathered together our highlights from the art capitals of NYC and London.
Queer Continuum: Archival, Avant-Garde and Beyond
Brooklyn Art Haus, New York
June 7 - July 27
This exciting exhibition includes photography by queer people of all backgrounds to show the history and progression of queer joy and resilience, as well as imagined depictions of LGBTQ+ futures. Curators Jules Diaz Petta and Nikki Myers hope to show a more intimate and joyful set of queer imaginations that show the enduring legacy of queer people despite historical marginalisation. The show features works by artists such as Nina Osoria Ahmadi, who explores '90s lesbian and modern queer fashion, Lou Lauren's observations of underrepresented sapphic eroticism through their black and white photographs, and Carlos Hernandez, who reimagines portrayals of sexualized queer femininity through Playboy magazine mock-ups, while experimenting with futurist and alien aesthetics.
Sacred Amethyst, Carlos Hernandez. Courtesy of Brooklyn Art Haus
LGBTQIA+ Tours
From the MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum in London, visitors are invited to enjoy tours of current collections under an LGBTQIA+ microscope. The latter, for instance, guides viewers through the long-standing history of queer specific and adjacent art. Tour highlights include The Ain Sakhri Lovers is the oldest known sculpture of two lovers, dating from about 11,000 years ago, whose genders are unclear and open to interpretation. As well as the 18th century porcelain chocolate cups belonging to the 'Ladies of Llangollen' AKA Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who fled Ireland together in 1778 and are thought to have been in a relationship.
Ultraviolet
15 Bateman St., London
July 4 - July 14
Ultraviolet is a powerful and thought-provoking group exhibition which delves into the intricate world of coded language, symbols, and gestures nestled within queer communities. The exhibition is presented by KKWEER Arts and curators Gemma Rolls-Bentley, and Ell Pennick. Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for 15 years, working passionately to champion diversity in the field and amplify the work of queer artists. Ell Pennick, Director and Founder of Guts Gallery (which champions the underrepresented voices of the art world) is one of the youngest gallerists in the industry. The exhibition features some of the biggest names in queer art, including new work by the iconic Maggi Hambling and a selection of new and existing works by Ajamu X, Lulu Bennett, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Olivia Sterling, Shadi Al-Atallah, Elsa Rouy, Sarah Jane Moon, Zach Toppin, Sadie Lee, Dale Lewis, Ebun Sodipo, Sola Olulode, Eva Dixon, Whiskey Chow, Sarah-Joy Ford, SHARP and Kevin Kane.
Chosen Family, Carlos Hernandez. Courtesy of Brooklyn Art Haus
Reynaldo Rivera: Fistful of Love/También La belleza
MoMA, New York
May 16 - Sept 9
"I’m a homo who documented his own world. And my world’s already coded, especially the world in the mid-1980s. You could say I was decoding my environment for other people like myself, originally. My work was intended for me, my viewing pleasure, and my friends—the people in the photos. The exception was what I would do for the newspaper. But often, that was someone I liked or admired—one of us. And I don’t mean just queer. I mean people like us; we know who we are." Reynaldo Rivera
The first solo museum exhibition of artist Reynaldo Rivera (b. 1964, Mexicali, Mexico) includes recent and iconic works, as well as never-before-seen photographs from his archive. The exhibition features fifty artworks, comprising black-and-white and colour photographs from 1981 to the present, a feature-length film, and ephemera. The artist’s pictures of an everyday intercultural Bohemia draws largely from their background of being raised between Mexicali, Stockton, Pasadena, and San Diego de la Unión, and eventually settling in the Echo Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles and into the artistic and activist milieu emerging around post-punk in the 1980s. His approach to image-making is informed by the drama and deep emotion of boleros and rancheras, the glamour of Old Hollywood and the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, and predecessors like Nadar, Brassaï, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
OUT of the Jewelery Box
MAD Museum, New York
Ongoing
Expanding the voices represented in MAD’s permanent collection, OUT of the Jewelry Box emphasises queer perspectives in the world of studio and contemporary art jewellery. The exhibition showcases pieces donated by Ron Porter and Joe Price, who have collected and worn art jewellery throughout their forty-one-year relationship, nine of those legally married. On view are 56 newly acquired works from The Porter Price Collection by queer artists and their allies, and 22 pieces by queer artists already represented in MAD’s permanent collection. The jewellery dates from the 1950s to the present, and stories from the artists and collectors about the role of jewellery in the construction of queer histories and identities accompany each work.
Felieke van der Leest. Rainbow Moose (sculpture with necklace) (edition of 3), 2005
© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / BONO, Oslo. Photo: Bruce M. White
I'm a Thousand Different People—Every One is Real
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York
March 15 - Jan 5 2025
Taking its title from a drawing by artist and queer icon Candy Darling, this exhibition unites a selection of works recently acquired by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Darling’s words evoke the multidimensionality of queer and trans life and artistic practices that insist on defining art and life entirely on one’s own terms. This is the overarching concept tying the exhibited works together. Both contemporary and historical, the pieces showcase various mediums and representational styles; making space for plurality, reinvention, and fantasy. Artists include: Ana Benaroya, Aziz + Cucher, Genesis Breyer P. Orridge, Candy Darling, Angela Dufresne, Jeffrey Gibson, Gotscho, Morgan Gwenwald, Geoffrey Hendricks, Tommy Kha, Baseera Khan, Kia LaBeija, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Joseph Liatela, Beau McCall, Pierre Molinier, Carlos Motta, John Schacht, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Kali Spitzer, Linda Stein, Linn Underhill, D'Angelo Lovell Williams.
Lyle Ashton Harris: Our First and Last Love
Queens Museum, New York
May 19 - Sept 22
Drawing together photographs and installations from both his celebrated and lesser-known series, the exhibition is a critical examination of identity and self-portraiture through the eyes of Lyle Ashton Harris (b. 1965, Bronx, NY). While tracing the central themes pervading his work of the last 35 years, it revolves around Harris' recently-completed Shadow Works; a series of meticulous photographic prints set within geometric frames of stretched Ghanaian funerary textiles, along with shells, shards of pottery, and cuttings of the artist’s own hair. Harris’s layered approach to his practice is further explored through earlier artworks and reference materials, personal snapshots, and handwritten notes. According to its press release, Harris’s work engages with broad social and political dialogues while also speaking with revelatory tenderness to his own communities, and to personal struggles, sorrows, and self-illuminations. Groupings centred around singular Shadow Works will expand upon these multiple themes, including Harris’s continued examination of otherness and belonging; the framing and self-presentation of Black and queer individuals; violence as a dark undercurrent of intimacy and desire; tenderness and vulnerability; and notions of legacy—both inherited and self-defined.
