Tannon Reckling

Reckling’s becoming HIV-positive during the COVID-19 pandemic creates declinations within perceived new generationalurgencies. Reckling’s practice attempts to resist patronizing, flattening, neoliberal art world aspects of identity tokenziatizng and financialization in ways that prioritize inter-leftist, anti-white supremacist, and pro-class reading and lean into inter-community critique. A priority in Reckling’s practice is following a value that ‘art’ should reflect the material conditions it occupies. This has created an interest in breaking ‘art around HIV/AIDS’ away from its often tokenized and flattened references and recycles visuals.

In a recent conceptual video, using the TikTok platform, Reckling collaborated with creative Ja’Taun Pratt (Blaque Fridae) whose is a poetic, actor, teacher, and drag performer in New York City. The video is titled “I Am Not Reading All That: A Sludge Content, Polemic TikTok: A Diary of Two HIV Positive Best Friends.” Pratt and Reckling grew up together in Nebraska and are active in the drag performing communities around NYC. The video uses a “sludge content” format which is a trend of split-screen, attention-grabbing, often AI produced, formal visual system to maintain algorithm engagement numbers from viewers. The video also used obscured poetry and activist language that mimic “information carousel” that come from leftist online spaces but that often become useless in the face of the capitalist platforms themselves. The video becomes a contemporary diary of living with HIV in contemporary nightlife but also poses urgent questions around community and inter-queer community discourses.

Reckling’s collaborative practice has manifested in curating and collaborative labor.

During the summer of 2021, Reckling collaborated with Omaha, Nebraska-based non profit Benson First Friday (where Reckling was the very first intern years before) for a “rural queer billboard” project that pushed limits for queer art that existed in conservative areas. This project fit into many other ‘covid billboard projects.’ The Imagery ended being abstracted to due restrictions from the conservative billboard company: sparking the question who actually gets to enjoy and live the images of queerness into the 2020’s? The project included imagery from photographer Katera Brown and HIV-positive artist Jared Packard.

In one billboard, Reckling collaborated with Princeton University Architecture Graduate Student and friend Adrian Silva whose was born in rural Gering, NE. The billboard was an iPhone photo of a ring of dirt Silva had drawn in his family farm and which was placed near Brandon Teena and Tannon Reckling’s shared birthplace of Lincoln, NE, USA.

The corresponding text read:

"This collaborative #sign features #photography of a drawn #circle in rural Nebraskan dirt. The drawn circle is in gesture of lifelong activist David Buckel who tragically took his own life in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York on April 14th, 2018. Buckel strived for LGBTQA+ and environmental rights during his life; he was the lead lawyer of the estate of Brandon Teena, a trans youth who was murdered in Nebraska. This drawing in the dirt is a gesture of #queer catharsis by hand. It is meant to invoke many hidden memories of non-dichotomous trauma and solidarity, especially in non-urban sites of contemporary queerness, aka not suburban #twinks in #Brooklyn or #LosAngeles.

The case of death for Buckel was, sadly and strangely, self-immolation. A "near perfect circle" was burned into the spot where Buckel's body was found by a passerby in Prospect Park. In this locale a note was found that read: "I apologise to you for the mess." There was a ring of soil around this spot where Buckel's remains were found, speculated to have been placed there to stop the spread of any further #fire. Buckel's history as an environmentalist came into this process of constructing one's own death bed: conjuring imagery of #fairy rings and historical #imperialism impacts on sacred land(s).

The pictured ring of #dirt is both a homage to Buckel's work as an activist, and a gesture for queer #rage and kinship for histories to come. The billboard is placed in rural #Nebraska, near Brandon Teena's birth place, as a #quiet homage to this event and as a strange spectacle for passersby in a monotone landscape. The piece might evoke similar feelings to that of the #billboard series from artist Félix González-Torres, who died of #AIDS complications in 1996, whose #work dealt with similar themes of #loss, yearning, and found materials. There are fires that come with current #infrastructure #failures."

During an internship at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and studying at the UCLA, Reckling worked on multiple exhibitions and contributed to The Getty’s acquisition and digitization of LACE’s extensive multimedia archive in 2017. Starting in 2020, Reckling was on the team that won a $65,000 grant to develop an artist residency for transgender and gender-diverse artists in the state of Oregon. While working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Reckling initated and co-curated “Day Without Day 2022” which the museum had not activated since 1994. Reckling worked on multiple exhibitions including: Jasper John: Mind/Mirror and Martine Syms: Neural Swamp. In Philadelphia, Recking also curated “Spreading Lights” a solo exhibition featuring photography and videos from artist Robert Hickerson whose work references 1980’s horror visuals as a form of play. In a fellowship within the Curatorial Department at Whitney Museum of American Art, Reckling worked on Memory Map: Juane Quick-to-See-Smith and Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century.

A notable example is in 2023-2024 when Reckling curated “Wussies Networking: Some Queer Sensibilities” at the Bureau of General Services- Queer Division at the NYC LGBT Center. Reckling collaborated with popular queer platform ‘WUSSY’ Magazine which is based in Atlanta, GA. Reckling leaned into their online engagement as well as emphasis on Southern locality which Reckling notes as a fresh take on needed creative labor and political organizing into the 2020’s. The exhibition had commissioned experimental poster from illustrator Eric Kostiuk Williams.

The curatorial text for the show read: “Things just seem more and more off, don’t they? How are queers meant to connect during hard times? This exhibition expands from an experimental retrospective for WUSSY Magazine, based in Atlanta, GA, and into questions around how we network today in multiple failing infrastructures. —— In 2023, when governmental bodies are doubling down on normalizing harm, engaging these topics matters especially for those of us ‘safely’ away in urban centers. This exhibition doesn’t have all the answers; but means to celebrate and support ongoing precarious queer labor that we all benefit from in the end. New York City might not have all the queer answers you are looking for: so try looking at other places where a capital-influenced Western queerness is not a priority.”

The exhibition featured: Iván L. Munuera, Vivian Rotie, Pablo Salz (2023 Venice Architecture Biennale), Topher Lineberry, @Missladysalad(Shawn Escarciga), Ian Lewandowski, R.I.S.E (Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment), Demian DinéYazhi' (2024 Whitney Biennial), Roopa Vasudevan, Alan Warburton, Marisa Olson (Post-Internet Diva), The Institute of Queer Ecology w/ DIS.ART, Chloe Dzubilo, Jennifer Camper, Alex Jochim, and QueerKY. There was also a corresponding discussion panel around contemporary queer publishing.

***last updated September 2024