Cassils, Etched in Light, March 31, 2024. Courtesy the artist. Photograph by Ashley J. Mitchell.
LACE Presents: Artists’ Film International
Saturday, April 12, 2025, 2–7 PM
Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Limited free parking available on site
RSVP here
Read about all the artists and films in AFI’24 here.
LACE is proud to announce the launch of this year’s Artists’ Film International (AFI’24), a touring film program which is collectively curated and presented by fifteen international arts organizations and convened by Forma. AFI’24 introduces the work of talented moving image artists to worldwide audiences, and will be live over 300 days, with exhibitions, screenings and public programs hosted across four continents.
This year the AFI partners have commissioned or selected recent artists’ films which respond to the theme Solidarity. Considering solidarity as a collective form of resistance, togetherness and interdependence, the fifteen films in AFI’24 address the ways in which solidarity is needed, sought and enacted on micro and macro scales. As a body of films, the AFI’24 programme provokes and cultivates radical imaginaries that have the potential to transform our wider, collective experience.
LACE’s selection for AFI’24 is Etched in Light (2024) by Cassils. Etched in Light is a participatory visual art and sonic performance led by the artist Cassils in collaboration with the National Center for Transgender Equality and over 140 trans and NB artists.
AFI’24 will launch at Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland in July 2024, before being presented around the world at AFI’24 partner venues: argos centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels, Belgium; Ballroom Marfa, Texas, USA; Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan in eXiLe e.V., (CCAA in EXiLe), Frankfurt, Germany; Cultural Center of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia; Forma, London, UK; Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo (GAMeC), Bergamo, Italy; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, USA; MMAG Foundation, Amman, Jordan; Project 88, Mumbai, India; Sapieha Palace, branch of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania; Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland; Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway; Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k), Berlin, Germany.
Featuring works by: Bahar Arfan; Deividas Vytautas Aukščiūnas; Ingrid Bjørnaali, Maria Simmons & Fabian Lanzmaier; Cassils; Collectif Faire-Part; Nadeem Din-Gabisi; Lihuel González; Rana Nazzal Hamadeh; Pınar Öğrenci; Milica Rakić; Caterina Erica Shanta; Mary Sullivan; Aarti Sunder; and more.
About Etched in Light, 2024
Taking place at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on 2024’s International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31, 2024), Etched in Light was a collaboration between Cassils, activists, organizers, dancers, musicians, filmmakers and over a hundred performers, including Blood Is Here vocalists Roco Córdova, Carmina Escobar, and Dorian Wood. Audiences of Etched Light encounter the ongoing political realities of transgender rights in America. Through the vision and direction of Cassils, a Transgender artist, viewers are guided through a visual and sonic performance that aims to combat these oppressive systems through the creation of a large-scale cyanotype.
Over 140 performers gathered together and were instructed to lie down on four large canvases in choreographed positions. These canvases were then subsequently transformed into cyanotypes with the imprints of the performers’ bodies left behind. The use of cyanotypes provided Cassils space to elaborate on the history and impact of photography whilst commenting on the power to deny the voyeuristic gaze often imposed on Trans bodies. By including performers from across the country and around the world, this project cultivated community and networks that will endure through times of systemic failure. By lying down together, the performers embraced their strength and care for one another, creating a powerful symbol of solidarity.
Pushing back on the politics of visibility in a moment of heightened violence, Cassils and participants called upon the imagery and affective energies of lie-ins, die-ins, and the historic NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt to claim space for trans and gender expansive people, transforming the National Mall into a site of beauty. The performance featured vocal invocations and musical scoring by Blood is Here (Carmina Escobar, Roco Córdova, and Dorian Wood), highlighted Black trans femmes with poems and music by Michael Love Michael, and included speeches by NCTE’s rally participants Hope Giselle and Angelica Ross. The performance was importantly linked to bodily autonomy through the participation of Viva Ruiz and Thank God for Abortion.
Etched In Light is a part of Cassils’s body of work Human Measure in collaboration with choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque and dancers Jas Lin, B Gosse, Canyon Carballosa, Kaydence De Mere, formerly Alucard Mendoza, and Marval Rechsteiner. Human Measure is produced by Farihah Zaman, cornpone, and Buffy The Slut. Etched in Light is part of the In Plain Sight feature documentary directed by PJ Raval and edited by Jason Chen and Lucas Ward. Etched in Light will be part of an expanded solo exhibition of work by Cassils at SITE SANTA FE, opening November 15, 2024.
About the Artist
Cassils (Los Angeles/ NYC) is a Canadian transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils’ art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle, and empowerment. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’ work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.
Cassils currently has a solo exhibition at Walter Phillips Gallery Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (AB) and an upcoming solo at SITE Santa Fe (NM). Cassils has had recent solo exhibitions at HOME Manchester (UK); Station Museum of Contemporary Art (TX);, Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts (AU); Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (NYC); Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PA); School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MA); Bemis Center (OH); MU Eindhoven, (NL).
Cassils’s work has been featured at the Marina Abramović Institute Takeover at Southbank Centre, London, UK; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, AZ; Oakland Museum of California, CA; Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany; MUCEM, Marseille, France; Deutsches Historisches Museum and the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany; MUCA Roma, Mexico City, Mexico; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; and Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica. Cassils’s performances have been featured at The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; The National Theatre, London, UK; ANTI Contemporary Performance Festival, Kuopio, Finland; Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Austria; Dark Mofo, MONA, Hobart, Tasmania; and Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. Cassils’s films have premiered at Sundance International Film Festival, Park City, UT; OUTFest, Los Angeles, CA; Institute for Contemporary Art, London, UK; Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands; M+, at West Kowloon, Hong Kong, China; and Outsider Festival, Austin, TX for Early Career Retrospective: Cassils.
Cassils is the recipient of the USA Artist Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Fleck Residency from the Banff Center for the Arts, a Princeton Lewis Artist Fellowship finalist, a Villa Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, the inaugural ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, California Community Foundation Grant, Creative Capital Award, MOTHA (Museum of Transgender History) award, the National Creation Fund and Visual Artist Fellowship from the Canada Council of the Arts. Cassils’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired, The Guardian, Art Forum, and academic journals such as Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Places Journal, and October. Cassils is the subject of the monograph Cassils, published by MU Eindhoven in 2015; and is the subject of a new catalog published by The Station Museum of Contemporary Art.
Cassils is an Associate Professor in Sculpture and Integrated Practices at PRATT Institute.
Photo: Richard Jupe
About Artists’ Film International 2024
Artists’ Film International was established in 2008 by Whitechapel Gallery in London and since its inception has seen 32 international venues collaborate. AFI’24 is the first iteration of the programme that is convened by Forma, London. AFI is an alternative, lateral programme that exemplifies non-hierarchical, borderless and collaborative curatorial models.
Responding to urgent global topics, the programme cultivates collective practice and cross- cultural dialogue, fosters the exchange of ideas and perspectives, and provides wide reaching visibility for artists.
Convened by Forma, Artists’ Film International 2024 is co-curated and co-presented by fifteen arts organizations across four continents. Launching at Crawford Art Gallery, Ireland on 4 July 2024 and touring worldwide, AFI’24 celebrates artists’ moving image centering on the theme of Solidarity.
SUPPORT
This program is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thanks to our friends at PRS for their support while LACE’s Hollywood gallery is under renovation.
