ISO Queer Gods (Exhibition) + Zine Release/Artist Book Fair
Excerpts from press release/facebook invitation by Root Division
ISO Queer Gods
Root Division
1131 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94103, USA
Exhibition Dates: June 8-25, 2016
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 2-6pm (or by appt.)
Curators: Amy Cancelmo and billy ocallaghan
ISO (In Search Of) Queer Gods features 16 contemporary queer artists whose work mines historical religious iconography and responds to diverse representations of homosexual, transgender and non-binary content that has been preserved through the mythology of world religion.
Responding to the curators’ research based call with a diverse range of historical inquiry and artistic practices, the artists in this exhibition explore iconography from Aztec, Norse, Bahamian, Afro-Cuban, Greek and Chinese mythology, as well as the stories of Hindu Gods, Sufi saints, Islamic Jinn, Biblical figures and Pagan Gods, through a queer lens.
The historical precedence that each artist has unearthed affirms the presence of queerness in cultural and spiritual storytelling, long before clinical terms were used as divisive and discriminatory categories.
The works featured in this exhibition are history lessons, personal explorations, and queer utopian divinations.
Accompanied by an inclusive artist zine, “queerer: the gods sure are queer, volume 2, this exhibition and publication offer the opportunity to look back and examine the preservation (and erasures) of queer representation through artifact and mythology, and to look forward to how these histories might manifest visually and conceptually in contemporary queer experience.
This project is presented as part of the National Queer Arts Festival, and co-sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center.
Featuring Works By:
Corey Brown, Craig Calderwood, Gerardo Castro, Orlando de la Garza, Nicki Green, Julz Hale Mary, Dorian Katz, Gardener Miller, missTANGQ, Shayne Punim, Carol Queen, Mohsin Shafi, Michael Starkman, William Ulrich, Charlie Watts, and Angie Wilson.
Special Event:
Small Art Book Fair & Zine Release Party
Date: Thursday, June 23, 4 – 8 PM
More Info: rootdivision.org/Book-Fair-2016