Past Event
Book Launch for DUETS: Frederick Weston & Samuel R. Delany in conversation
Zoom Event
Visual AIDS launched the latest installment of our DUETS publication series, DUETS: Frederick Weston & Samuel R. Delany in conversation, with an online program featuring Samuel R. Delany, Svetlana Kitto, Devin N. Morris, and LJ Roberts. Organized to coincide with the exhibition Frederick Weston at Ortuzar Projects, the book launch featured recorded responses to Weston’s artwork and video of Weston performing his poetry.
In the book, Frederick Weston (1946–2020) and Samuel R. Delany come together for a wide-ranging dialogue, reflecting on their overlapping histories in Times Square, the deep impact of AIDS on their creative practices, and the ever-changing intersections of race, sex, language, and art. Featuring additional contributions by Bruce Benderson, Svetlana Kitto, and Tavia Nyong'o.
DUETS: Frederick Weston & Samuel R. Delany in Conversation is available for preorder on the Visual AIDS store ($10), shipping in March.
Visual AIDS and Gordon Robichaux will be organizing an expansive memorial event for Weston in 2021.
Participant Biographies
Samuel R. Delany is a novelist and critic. His most recent books include Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2012, Magnus Books; and more recently published in a corrected edition by the author on Amazon in 2018) and The Atheist in the Attic (2018, PM Press). He lives in Philadelphia.
Svetlana Kitto is a writer, editor, and oral historian based in New York City. Since Frederick Weston's first solo show at Gordon Robichaux in 2019, Svetlana has interviewed Fred and written about his life and work consistently. Her writing has been featured in Art21, BOMB, the Cut, Guernica, Hyperallergic, Interview, the New York Times, and Vice, among other publications. She has contributed oral histories to archives and exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society, New York; the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; and the gallery Gordon Robichaux, New York.
Devin N. Morris is a Brooklyn-based artist interested in abstracting American life and subverting traditional value systems through the exploration of identity, memory, and grief in mixed media paintings, photographs, writings and video. Morris was recently in The Aesthetics of Matter, the first NYC curatorial project by Deux Femme Noires: Mickalene Thomas and Racquel Chevremont. He was also featured in the New Museum’s MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas: Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project and in 2018 his work was featured alongside Frederick Weston’s in the two-person show Inside Out, Here, at La Mama Gallery, curated by Eric Booker (Studio Museum, Exhibition Coordinator). Morris is the founder of 3 Dot Zine, which is an annual publication that serves as a forum for marginalized concerns and recently hosted the Brown Paper Zine & Small Press Fair with the Studio Museum in Harlem and created a site-specific installation at the MoMA PS1 2018 NY Art Book Fair.
LJ Roberts is a Brooklyn based artist working in installation, textiles, collage, storytelling and text. Their work addresses queer and trans politics, material deviance, kinships, archives, and narrative. Their first New York City solo exhibition will open at Pioneer Works in the fall of 2021.
Related Events
Frederick Weston at Ortuzar Projects |
Saturday, December 12, 2020 |