queer art

  • JP Terlizzi's Creatures of Curiosity

    By Geoffrey C. Koslov
    JP Terlizzi's Creatures of Curiosity

     

    The production of artwork flows from the release of something inside an artist that drives their creative expression. JP Terlizzi is an artist that uses his abilities to envision and build ephemeral works of art that are memorialized as photographs. In Creatures of Curiosity and Garden Symphonies, Terlizzi revisits his earlier works in The Good Dishes and Holding Arabesque, with several new twists. Terlizzi comments that, for him, “The Good Dishes integrates memory, legacy, and metaphor with my response to loss. Without fail, when it came to the family’s fine china, that item was always given to the person that most cherished its memory and sentimental value.” Following that series, the Covid crisis opened a door to additional creative expression: “Holding Arabesque was inspired by the shifts in my life brought on by a result of the pandemic. It was about craving stability in a time of instability. I built these food totems to push their stability as my response. Humor and Nostalgia are known coping mechanisms we resort to when we experience high stress or trauma… I was craving happier times.” As our culture began moving past social isolation, his visual engagement became bolder, first evolving into Garden Symphonies, and then Creatures of Curiosity.

  • Gabriel García Román, Dorian, 2019
    Gabriel García Román, Dorian, 2019
    The Body as Memory investigates the ways in which the body interacts with the environment around it—the cultures it is born into, how it is viewed, how it views itself within that context, and how it imagines itself. It seeks to recognize the queer body as a historical site of injustice, yet, through acceptance, present the body as a site of exultation (and exaltation) instead. 
     
    Caleb Cole, Nick Simko, and Gabriel García Román each tackle concepts of identity and queerness through the lens of their own unique experiences. Having grown up with a passion for thrifting and second-hand objects, Cole’s work reflects a deep desire to connect with histories lost to time, stories that are just as personal as they are collective. Simko’s interest in intersections of technology and authenticity tie into this discussion of recorded histories, questioning what is missing from the narrative and how much of that which remains is artifice. Simko also seeks to test the limits of photography’s ability to express his own queerness in textural, spatial, and atmospheric ways. García Román’s background in the Roman Catholic church inspired him to co-opt the aesthetics of traditional religious iconography to elevate individuals who are underrepresented and often pushed to the margins of Western communities.
  • ©Alia Ali, Odyssey, MIGRATION Series, 2021
    ©Alia Ali, Odyssey, MIGRATION Series, 2021

    Alia Ali uses a global palette of fabrics and photography to map culture and history. She is a US multimedia artist, photographer, and a global traveler with a Yemeni-Bosnian heritage, who is fascinated by the use and meaning of language and the patterns of hand woven indigenous fabric  As Ali expresses it: “Textile unites and divides us, both physically and symbolically.”  Her art reflects on the politics of borders, colonization, language and the non-verbal passage of traditions and cultural stories through fabrics created by master artisans from around the world.  As a purposeful artist on a mission, Ali has made a concerted effort to meet the craftspeople who create these fabrics.  She has traveled extensively to learn about meaning and processes associated with the fabric, patterns and pigments.  While the fabrics are regional, the appreciation and production has become global.  On the surface, these may plainly look like an exciting colorful presentation, but what is covered and explored in the exhibition “Cartographies of Pattern” is a deeper journey, guided by Alia Ali’s imagery, into the story behind each threaded weave of her BORDERLAND, FLUX, MIGRATION, FLOW, INDIGO and حب (ḥub) // LOVE series.