The Body as Memory: Nick Simko, Caleb Cole, & Gabriel García Román

In the works brought together for this show, the visual form of the body serves as a vessel, telling a story, or only parts of a story, or even leaving the story entirely untold, leaving the viewer to question what is missing, what has been lost. Memory is a powerful force, and queer and minority histories are systematically erased by those who control the larger narrative. The works in The Body as Memory touch on different points in this process: the active twisting of history through omission; the passively violent erasure of an entire queer generation, along with their stories, during the AIDS crisis; the modern experience of living as a queer individual in a world not made for us; and finally, a look towards a brighter future which turns traditional visual language on its head.

Nick Simko’s studio work addresses and employs photography as a technology that informs how we see and how we are seen. His photographs, videos, collage, tapestries, and sculptures have been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the United States including Diversity Richmond, The Walters Art Museum, The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Hillyer Arts Space, The Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and Sanitary Tortilla Factory. His studio work has been published in the University of Pittsburgh culture journal Contemporaneity, and on Strange Fire Collective. As a 2019 ONE Archives Foundation LGBTQ research fellow, Nick studied the photography collection at ONE. He is also a leadership team member for the Society for Photographic Education LGBTQ Caucus, which serves LGBTQ students and faculty in college art departments across the U.S. Nick holds an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico, and a BFA in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Nick is Assistant Professor of Photography at Fort Hays State University.

Caleb Cole is a Midwest-born, Boston-based artist whose work addresses the opportunities and difficulties of queer belonging, as well as aims to be a link in the creation of that tradition, no matter how fragile or ephemeral or impossible its connections. They were recently an inaugural resident at Surf Point Residency and have received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Photography, Artadia Boston Finalist Award, Hearst 8x10 Biennial Award, and 3 Magenta Flash Forward Foundation Fellowships, among other distinctions. Caleb exhibits regularly at a variety of national venues and has held solo shows in Boston, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, among others. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Newport Art Museum, the Davis Art Museum, Brown University Art Museum, and Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. Cole teaches at Boston College and Clark University.