Witnessing Intimacy at LACE: multiple definitions of masculinity through performance.
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) proudly announces the seventh in its series of Emerging Curators events, Reclaiming Performance as a Revolutionary Act, a series of recorded and live performances spanning three weeks in 2022.
Our 2022 curator, Cat Jones, is a Los Angeles-based artist whose projects use different mediums to resist western cultural binaries. Black queer artistry is fundamental to these visual and auditory narratives that encourage a sharing of truths that result in healing.
“We discover that movement and performance have always been our saving grace. It has been our refuge from rejection. Seeking acknowledgment and praise within the queer community is often vital to the sustaining of our existence when engaging in unsafe spaces. There is a celebration of our continuance,” explains Jones.
Performers include Jaden Fields (Los Angeles), performer, activist, and poet, who uses poetry and storytelling as a vehicle for change; Dr. Daniel B. Coleman (North Carolina), performance artist, installation artist, mover, and choreographer, who focuses on the body as a physical medium for story sharing; and more.
Emerging Curator 2022 Panelist, Uri McMillan, an Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Departments of English and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles states: “Cat Jones’s proposed exhibition is a timely, urgent, and utterly unique project dedicated to an under-considered group, particularly in the realm of the art world. It will provide a much-needed and creative corrective.”
Through these performances and conversations, the audience will experience the intimacy and sensuality of body movement as a means of reclaiming trans masculine identity. Most importantly, the project highlights transmasculine and Non-Binary individuals who use performance as a medium to heal, release, and celebrate their lives and importance in our world.
Emerging Curator 2022 Panelists:
Baseera Khan is a New York based visual and performance artist whose practice explores conditions of displacement, assimilation, and fluidity, all of which produce collaged identities. The core of their ideas center upon how the body is affected through surveillance and otherness, especially within capitalist-driven societies. Khan engenders installations and performances with their subjectivity through a decolonized, feminist perspective.
Uri McMillan is Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Departments of English and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (NYU Press, 2015), which was awarded the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Barnard Hewitt Award and the Errol Hill Prize, both from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR). He has published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and ASAP/Journal and essays in museum/gallery based publications for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Aperture Foundation, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Edgar Miramontes, Deputy Executive Director & Curator of the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) serves on the curatorial and management team for REDCAT’s international, national, and regional programming with an emphasis in dance, performance and theater. Miramontes served as co-curator and co-producer of the Getty-led Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, an international celebration of art and performance, with more than 200 Latin American and Latinx artists supported by a major grant from the Getty Foundation. He was on the curatorial team for the National Performance Network’s (NPN) Performing Americas Program and has served as a panelist for the NEA, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Network of Ensemble Theaters, L.A. Cultural Affairs Department, L.A. County Arts Commission, NPN, and as a reviewer for MAP Fund and Creative Capital. He is currently on the Board of NPN and an advisory committee member of The Japan Foundation, New York and NEFA’s National Theater Project. Miramontes earned a BA in Geography / Environmental Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.
About the Emerging Curator Program – this program is designed to discover curatorial talent in Los Angeles and gives an opportunity for an emerging curator to partner with LACE. Applicants are reviewed by a panel that recommends a compelling project to the LACE team consistent with LACE’s experimental spirit. This year’s call for proposals was for projects centered on performance.
Image: Cat Jones, Untitled, digital drawing, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
