The Honesty of Teens and Their Bedrooms / Hyperallergic
An adolescent girl in her bedroom is a curious thing. If she has her own and doesn’t share it with a swath of siblings, it will become her sanctuary, a place to which she retreats when she wants to get into her own zone and be with herself. Typically, the walls are...
Divining the Future of the Past / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Donna Huanca is from the South Side of Chicago, and she hasn’t been back here since she was 15, an adolescent girl. The postcard for her solo exhibition Scrying Threats at Queer Thoughts Gallery is an image of Huanca and 14 other girls, all about the same...
Dreaming on Death Row picked up by The Verge & Nashville Scene
My story for Hyperallergic about the show Unit 2 (Part 1), a collaboration between Watkins College art students and prisoners on death row in Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Prison was picked up by The Verge and the Nashville Scene. Thanks y'all! Artists...
Road Tripping to the Queer South / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — A seven-week road trip isn’t something you just plan overnight. In fact, it’s a long-term project that takes significant strategizing and visits to couchsurfing.com. Once on the road, it becomes clear that not everyone has the stamina for that seemingly...
ArtPrize and its Discontents / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — At surface value, ArtPrize is all giant flowers, mythical dragons, yarn-bombed trees, and cash galore. Begun in 2009, the annual event attracts thousands of visitors from Michigan and elsewhere, a strange combination of populism and art world elitism wrapped...
Yarn Bombing ArtPrize / Hyperallergic
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — There’s nothing quite as uplifting as wandering around an urban area and stumbling upon soft loving wool coverings. Wrapped around fences, trees, and even parking meters, the woven yarn invites that tactile, community-oriented and crafty feel...
SiTE:Lab Raises the Bar for ArtPrize / Hyperallergic
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — In a smaller city like Grand Rapids, where the cost of living is far lower than American art centers like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, there can be more curatorial opportunities — if one plays their cards right. The Not Yet exhibition...
At ArtPrize, What the F is “Art”? / Hyperallergic
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Grand Rapids is a two hour drive due west of the state’s bankruptcy carnival that is Detroit, the hometown of President Gerald R. Ford, and the first city in the U.S. to add fluoride to its drinking water. It is an easy-to-visit city located...
Is There a Queer Selfie? / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — If the act of allowing someone else to photograph you is read as normative, the selfie in and of itself is a queer act of taking back the gaze. So is there such a thing as a queer selfie, or is the selfie inherently a queer(ed) self-portrait? To...
A Feather Falls in Harlem / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Feathers fall from the sky all the time. The wind plucks them from birds’ bodies, and they fall fast whilst spinning in circles. Once upon the ground, human fingers may pick them up and gaze at the way light shines through. Or perhaps they just sit there on...
Against Ethno-Kitsch: Trance Music in a Broken System / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — “I’m pretty opinionated about music,” says artist/musician Arrington de Dionysio, whose creative work has taken him to Indonesia and back. “I’m not interested in sampling ‘a little bit of this, a little bit of that’ for its own sake alone, the results are...
A Bestial Journey to the Center of Illinois / Hyperallergic
CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Ill. — I traveled down to Champaign-Urbana carrying two cassette tapes of BESTIARY, a mix tape by the music label Hairy Spider Legs. On my Amtrak ride back to Chicago, I held zero cassette tapes in hand, and instead carried with my a head full of...
In its Chicago Debut, Fountain Art Fair Spouts, Drips and Splashes / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — The Fountain Art Fair is located at the edge a heavily industrial area of the Pilsen neighborhood where many local artists live and work. Compared to Expo Chicago, it is a welcome free-for-all DIY art oasis at the edge of an art community, and housing...
The Girl Gore Aesthetics of White Lace, Ghosted Bodies, and Animal Menageries at Expo Chicago / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — I didn’t want to go to the art fair. I never do. A lot of stuff at art fairs is the same-ish, as artist William Powhida recently mused, and galleries are trying their best to sell the most. Yet the art fairs keep coming, and as the market has proven Chicago...
Photographs Behind Closed Doors / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — To every story there is a backstory. Open the door and walk down the hall until you reach a room you haven’t been in before. The exhibition Backstory at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) travels down those halls, considering the photography of...
Revealing the Group Selfie / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Selfies are no more a singular activity than any other type of digital vernacular photograph. The couple selfie and the group selfie are integral to selfie satisfaction for today’s socially networked individual. They may also include incarnations of...
Searching for the Switzerland of India / Hyperallergic
NASHVILLE — Photographer and video artist Christine Rogers didn’t intend to end up in India on a Fulbright Scholarship searching for a folkloric “heaven on earth” known as theSwitzerland of India. It’s just that fate dropped her down there. And as the adage goes, when...
Queer Freakazoid Liberator Goddess: Dionysus for the 21st Century / Hyperallergic
You’ve probably heard of Dionysus, an Olympian god with a reputation for being a badass. What you didn’t know about him, however, is that he’s also your new androgynous goddess, ready to liberate all who grace his presence through the power of dance, ritual, magic,...
A Psychedelic Cave Blooms in Chicago / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — If a tree grows in Brooklyn, a cave populated by neon flora ‘n fauna blooms in Chicago by way of New Mexico. Nucleotide is the spawn of Meow Wolf, an 18-person collective from Santa Fe that has been making large-scale immersive installations since 2007. This...
On Photographing the Women of Gaza / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — I didn’t come across Tanya Habjouqa‘s photo series Women of Gazaunderneath a sensationalized article headline about the Middle East. A friend posted one of her photos to my wall because it looked like a woman in a hijab shooting a selfie. But the tiny pink...