(UN)FIXED

Opening 6-9pm Friday June 17th

Gallery Hours Weekdays 12-6pm, June 17 — August 5

(UN)FIXED takes as its conceptual grounding the curators’ relationships to trans*queer embodiment and their belief in expansive ways of being. While Lorenzo recently ceased taking testosterone as a performative attempt to embody gender abolition, Jay began taking estrogen this year. Although one might be tempted to conceptualize their experiences in the framework of a simple dichotomy or as irreconcilable contradictions—trans masculine/trans feminine, testosterone/estrogen, or ceasing and beginning—they seek to challenge misconceptions of “fixedness” and use a trans/queer lens to draw connections between the ways each of the artists included in the exhibition complicate the seemingly dichotomous. In painting, photography, video, sculpture, performance, and installation, the artists in (UN)FIXED demonstrate an understanding of the ways holding multiple truths is necessary for life outside the margins.

On view through August 5th at SoMad Gallery, (UN)FIXED brings together 12 artists selected by the curators from an open call of 500 applicants—Vincent Chong, Theo Trotter, Rachel Stern, Li Wang, Lassai, Kate Muehlemann-Cataldo, Gino Romero, Gabrielle Randall, Darian Deshawn Stewart, Ash Hagerstrand, Aisha Tandiwe Bell, and Peter Clough—who engage with conflicting notions of transformation, temporality, embodiment and subjecthood. Video and installation work by Jay Elizondo and photographs by Lorenzo Triburgo are also included and speak to the additional (seemingly contradictory) experiences of agency and unknowing in relation to a trans/queer self. The artworks in the show are at once confrontational and intimate – they claim space, queer time, forge existence, and destabilize the foundation of systems we live within.