Gay Angelinos are squeezing culture out of that concrete: Two art exhibits and a one-man performance art show proves this month has the most gay-friendly art L.A. has seen since Elizabeth Taylor’s shine was erected in the Abbey.
Originally curated in San Francisco by local street artist Jeremy Novy, A History of Queer Street Art gets the Hollywood treatment this month thanks to L.A.-based artist Homo Riot. The exhibition opens today and will run through February 29 at the Physical Goods gallery. Using stencils, stickers and installations, History recreates the street art experience but from a queer point of view.
As the gallery text details:
In street art world, being queer isn’t okay. The scene is dominated by misogynistic and homophobic heterosexual men. This exhibit, intended to counter the world of hegemonic street art, sheds light on the constant bullying of queer street artists and depicts the lineage of queers in street art and graffiti.
Artists showcased in the exhibit include OBEY’s Shepard Fairey (right), the video game-inspired Space Invaders and European art couple Adrian & Shane (above). “I hope this show will be seen as an important milestone in the queer artistic history of Los Angeles,” said Homo Riot.
Photo: The Site Unseen
NEXT: Cruising the Archives
The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the largest repository of LGBT documents in the country, continues to show off its postwar collection in the extended Cruising the Archives: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1940–1985, including photos of the infamous Black Cat protest of 1967, artwork by homo-core punk Vaginal Davis as well as never-before-seen artifacts from the archives.
The next event in conjunction with the exhibit is a two-part lecture and discussion on February 24, exploring the 40-year history of radical activism along the Chelsea piers in New York.
On March 1, queer performances and video installations will be in the spotlight with a focus on trans exclusion from past historical records. Majorly supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation, Cruising the Archives is part of a Getty Museum initiative bringing together sixty cultural institutions to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene.
Photo: ONE
NEXT: Gay Hist-Orgy
Performance artist Ian McKinnon gets up close and personal with unlikely historical bedfellows in his one-man production, Gay Hist-Orgy, premiering on Saturday, February 18 at the Moving Arts Hyperion Station in Silverlake.
In this raunchy multimedia romp, a leather-daddy professor presents a smorgasbord of fun and factual man-love anecdotes dating back to the time of Plato and Socrates, while booty calling Hadrian, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Abe Lincoln and Allen Ginsberg up to present day.
The historical cluster-fuck draws from primary source materials like love letters, poems, political and philosophical manifestos, and early scientific inquiries into the nature of homosexuality.
Photo: Gay Hist-Orgy
OutArtists
OutArtists supports your artistic and creative endeavours. We wish the LGBT artists involved with the exhibit the very best!