Ephemera As Evidence Catalogue

Exhibition catalog for Ephemera As Evidence

Essay by Joshua Lubin-Levy and Ricardo Montex. Excerpts from Jose Esteban Munoz's essay "Ephemera As Evidence"; Additional contributions by Ricardo Montez, Ryder Baldwin, Emma Chikow, Azizi Curtis, Michael Doherty, Guy Greenberg, L.N. Hafezi, Francesca Jannello, Kia Labeija, Dylan Leber, Philip B. Paschal, Tyler Plosia, Nayeli Portillo and Sade Swift.

Ephemera As Evidence was curated by Joshua Lubin-Levy and Ricardo Montez for Visual AIDS. June 5- 29, 2014 at La MaMa Galleria, 6 E. 1st Street, New York City.

The exhibition features artwork and contributions by D-L Alvarez, Nao Bustamante, Vincent Chevalier, Clit Club Archive, Rosson Crow, Luke Dowd, Chloe Dzubilo, Benjamin Fredrickson, Tony Just, Kiki & Herb (Justin Vivian Bond & Kenny Mellman), Kia Labeija, Nancer LeMoins, Charles Long, Kevin McCarty, Eric Rhein, Michael Slocum, Jack Smith, Hugh Steers, Carmelita Tropicana, Conrad Ventur, Jack Waters & Peter Cramer, James Wentzy and Jessica Whitbread & Anthea Black.

The exhibition and catalogue takes its title from a 1996 essay by José Esteban Muñoz (1967-2013) which is excepted in the catalogue. Ephemera as Evidencebrings together visual art, performance, and pedagogical projects that evidence past lives and future possibilities in the work of artists confronting HIV/AIDS. Thinking through the ephemeral as necessary to the political life of HIV, the exhibition acknowledges a larger history of silence and erasure while at the same time making salient strategies for survival and worldmaking potentials in the face of a violently phobic public sphere. Yet, to consider ephemera in the social and cultural life of HIV/AIDS today is to consider both the burden and blessing of continued life. Within our contemporary moment the question is not merely one of survival but of how survival reverberates beyond the immediacy of a crisis. The catalogue and exhibition ask us to consider how changing demographics of those affected by HIV/AIDS and the resulting reorientations to crisis force new kinds of temporalities in an engagement with both the past and the future.

Ephemera As Evidence 100 pages / 24 color plates 8.5” x 5.5” / perfect bound, softcover

Designer: Alan Ruiz Publisher by Visual AIDS, 2014 Edition of 500

OUT OF PRINT; PDF AVAILABLE HERE