Join LMCC and Allies in Arts for a full day of artist talks, performances, readings and a special DJ set to celebrate ANTI•VENOM, an exhibition that brings together seven multidisciplinary artists to ask: How do we affirm our humanity in the face of complex harm? In this luminous exhibition of videos the artists face a troubled reality and transform it, directing our gaze towards radiant visions of the future. Each of the programs featured offer a microdose towards collective healing.
ANTI•VENOM is curated by Sophia Wallace and Drew Denny of Allies in Arts.
As bill-after-bill emerges to criminalize trans and queer bodies, Jacolby Satterwhite‘s opalescent communities vogue a narrative of interconnectedness, warning that we are in a malignant hell when we hurt each other. Conditions of harm are met with arresting beauty as cobalt and indigo spill out from the installation by Le’Andra LeSeur. Amelia Winger-Bearskin‘s layered videos, glitch rainbows and dissolve architectures with AI. Joaquin Trujillo reclaims the scapegoated old man in El Viejo. Adorned in red velvet, silver bells and a confetti of ribbons, Trujillo dances a path of return for dispossessed queers. In this year of the rabbit, Andrew Thomas Huang’s muse is a humble young restaurant worker. Through Thomas Huang’s lens, the banality of Matt’s life is beautifully disrupted when he is seduced by an alluring Godfrom the Qing dynasty. In Corinne Spencer’s mesmerizing installation, Black feminine subjects care for one another across generations of life and death. In Sankofa, a Ghanaian principle that represents returning to the past in order to inform a better future, Anna Parisi places viewers in the politicized terrain of Black hair.
The magical quality of the pieces in this show draws from the specific communities the artists are rooted in. And yet, the hermetic power of these artworks extends far beyond the specific. We hope that many needed antidotes might be found in this exhibition experience.
Join Allies in Arts and LMCC on Saturday, September 16 from 2-7pm for a full day of artist talks, performances, readings, and a special DJ set to celebrate the exhibition ANTI•VENOM. Each of the programs featured offers a microdose toward collective healing.
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Artist Talk with Joaquin Trujillo
Joaquin Trujillo will be conversation with curator Sofía Shaula Reeser-del Rio
The Heartbr(ache) Club
All following programs are organized by Le’Andra LeSeur and Ksenia M. Soboleva, creators of The Heartbr(ache) Club.
3:30 – 4:00 PM
Poetry reading with Sadé Powell
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
The Heartbr(ache) Club conversation with Le’Andra LeSeur and Ksenia M. Soboleva
The Heartbr(ache) Club is a collaboration between Le’Andra LeSeur and Ksenia M. Soboleva, that takes the form of a curatorial initiative and an oral history project. Taking heartbr(ache) as the starting point for an ongoing dialogue on queer identity, LeSeur and Soboleva have been collecting heartbr(ache) stories that deepen our understanding of physical and platonic intimacy, both between people and with the world at large. Negating the notion of being broken open as a finale, LeSeur and Soboleva consider the generative potential of aching, and suggest heartbr(ache) as a precondition for living a queer life.
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Performance by Reed Rushes
<3 of matter is a new work from Reed Rushes. Working as their persona, Stan, ‘<3 of matter’ is part of Stan’s creation story. It taps into his dusty beginnings on this planet, his search for body, his search for desire. Following lust, Stan is drawn to the towns, drawn to the cities. Video work made in collaboration with Houari Bouchenak, performance made in collaboration with Kate Williams. <3 of matter will include nudity and may not be suitable for all audiences. 6:00 PM – 6:30 PMPerformance by LaWhore Vagistan
6:30 PM
DJ set by MUSE(O)FIRE
Allies in Arts is a trans and queer led 501c3 non profit organization dedicated to supporting artists of all mediums who identify as women, BIPOC and LGBTQQIA2S+ through exhibitions, screenings, grants, and fairly paid commissions. Allies in Arts also houses Transanta, a trans led mutual aid project that supports trans youth through the holiday season. In 2023, Allies in Arts is launching our first ever educational program, the Transanta writing workshop, in which a class from the 4,000 trans youth who have participated in Transanta thus far will be given college level writing instruction, given an opportunity to read their work aloud at the Hammer Museum, and have their work published in our first book.
Allies in Arts and LMCC Present ‘Microdoses‘ on Sunday, September 16th from 2:00 to 7:00pm at The Arts Center at Governors Island (Building 110), 110 Andes Road, NYC.