About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art
Wrightwood 659, Chicago, IL
May 22 – August 10, 2019
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art takes as its point of departure Allen Ginsberg’s description of the participants in the Stonewall riots, in an article in The Village Voice, as having “lost that wounded look.” Indeed, the rebellion marked the advent of a new spirit of resistance, one whose tenor was decidedly activist, interventionist, and socially engaged. This self-assertion was premised on an emerging idea-that queerness was not an individual pathology but a collective political identity. In turn, this propelled a new kind of queer art, one that was not, as in the past, coded and indirect, but confident, collective, and often openly engaging in political advocacy.
Unlike other exhibitions presented on the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, About Face attempts to provide a state-of-the-field survey of queer art today with more than 450 works by an international roster of artists. They have given form to the idea of a collective queerness, defined by certain commonalities even as it celebrates our racial, gendered, and ethnic differences. Above all, this exhibition engages the diversity of queernesses, highlighting the voices of those who have previously been relegated to the margins in an increasingly pluralistic queer art world. The works on view range from painting and sculpture to photography, film and video, and installation and performance art.
Artist featured in the exhibition include: Carlos Alfonzo, Ralph Arnold, Shimon Attie, Amos Badertscher, Joan E. Biren, Rashayla Marie Brown, Roger Brown, Jerome Caja, Nick Cave, Tianzhuo Chen, John Dugdale, Bon Faust, Gilbert & George Maria Elena Gonzalez, Hervé Guibert, Harmony Hammond, Keith Haring, Lyle Ashton Harris, Sharon Hayes, Richard Hoffmann, Peter Hujar, Bill Jacobson, Deborah Kass, Greer Lankton, Attila Richard Lukacs, Harvey Milk, Kent Monkman, Carlos Motta, Zanele Muholi, Alice O’Malley, Carl Pope, Marlon Riggs, Jacolby Satterwhite, Leonard Suryajaya, Gail Thacker, Keijaun Thomas, Arthur Tress, Del LaGrace Volcano, Sophia Wallace, and Martin Wong.
The curator of the exhibition is Jonathan David Katz, PhD, Visiting Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at The University of Pennsylvania and chair of the doctoral program in Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo.
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art is made possible by the Alphawood Foundation Chicago.