Positive Assertions

LOVE YOUR BODY!
LOVE EVERY BODY!
LOVE EVERYBODY!

The above message comes from the PLAY SMART trading card campaign, part of Visual AIDS’ Print + Editions. Embodying this tri-fold declaration of love are artists AMOS MAC, DEVIN ELIJAH, IVAN MONFORTE and JESSICA WHITBREAD, each using their experience, bodies, community and creativity to assert the positive value of their lives.

Visual AIDS organized POSITIVE ASSERTIONS, where the artists, in conversation with SACHA YANOW showed and discussed their work.

POSITIVE ASSERTIONS
A Talkshow & Tell Event in support of PLAY SMART

7pm – 9pm
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
The LGBT Center of New York,
Rm 310, 208 West 13th Street
Free, All are Welcome

Featuring:
Amos Mac (Artist, Original Plumbing, Play Smart),
Devin Elijah (Artist, Photographer, Epilogue)
Ivan Monforte (Artist, GMHC, Play Smart)
Jessica Whitbread (Artist, AIDS ACTION NOW, International Community of Women living with HIV North America)
Moderated by Sacha Yanow (Artist, Art Matters)

*** Visual AIDS freely distributed GAY INCANTATIONS, a zine of daily positive assertions from Lucas Crawford and Coral Short, designed by Karen Campos Castillo***

BIOS:
Amos Mac is an artist, writer and publisher who photographs the dynamic, the gender non-conforming, the under-represented and beyond though voyeuristic, high-end snap-shot styled portraits. He has shown his photographs in galleries and at events internationally, toured nationally with Sister Spit: The Next Generation and both his written and photographic work have been published in collaboration with the Huffington Post, Italian Vogue, CANDY, BUTT, OUT, and countless others. In 2009 he launched Original Plumbing, the premier quarterly magazine that documents the culture of transgender men.

Photographer Devin Elijah is of Jewish and African American descent. His portrait work spans the diverse stream of personalities that populate his life. His current work, “A Chronicle of Love & Loss in Sickness & in Health” is a Polaroid series that serves as a reflection of self as well as the surrounding community of artist, musicians and muses that nurture his need to photograph. He’s exhibited both internationally and in his native New York City, where he currently lives and works.

New York-based Iván Monforte was born in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. He received a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996, and an M.F.A. from New York University in 2004. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2004. He has shown at Bronx Museum of the Arts, Longwood Art Gallery, Queens Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, Artists Space as part of PERFORMA05, Elizabeth Foundation Gallery, Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, La MaMa Galleria, and Socrates Sculpture Park. He is the recipient of a UCLA Art Council Award, a Lambent Fellowship in the Arts from the Tides Foundation, and an Art Matters grant for research in Samoa. He has participated in residencies at Sidestreet Projects, Lower East Side Print Shop, Center for Book Arts, and Smack Mellon.

Jessica Whitbread: Creating spaces that become sites for dialogue are what this lady's about, starting first and foremost with her own body. As a queer woman living with HIV she explores her own sexuality and curiosity, often in public places in hopes of making it easier for others to do the same. Jessica has a masters from York University in Building Communities to Ignite Social Change (seriously that's what the paper says) which she does through her tea parties, No Pants No Problem events, and POSTER/virus project with AIDS ACTION NOW!

Sacha Yanow is a NYC-based performance artist, actor and the Director of Art Matters. As a performer, she has appeared in film, theater and dance works by artists including Karen Finley, Julie Tolentino and Laura Parnes. Her own performance work has been curated at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dixon Place and The Kitchen and supported through residencies at The Field and Yaddo. She is also a member of the Dyke Division of the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, with whom she co-wrote and performed in the live lesbian serial Room for Cream at La Mama. Previous to her position at Art Matters, she served as Director of Operations at The Kitchen.

To learn more about PLAY SMART visit the Visual AIDS Print+ Editions page.