Men of Color: Nudes at Ease, Laurie Toby Edison
The Female Gaze, Maryann Luera

SomArts, 934 Brannan @ 8th St
Opening & Reception : Friday, June 7; 6-8pm
Donation at door

Men of Color: Nudes at Ease, Laurie Toby Edison
In a world where virtually the only male nudes we see are posed, sexualized, and/or manipulated images of a very narrow range of fetishized men, photographer Laurie Toby Edison’s work brilliantly expands and elaborates our images of masculinity. This selection of black-and-white photographs from her internationally acclaimed series Familiar Men provides breathtaking new insights into the bodies and lives of men of color across a broad range of age, size, and class.

Laurie Toby Edison has been a photographer since 1989. In 1994 she published Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, a black & white fine art photography book (edited and text by Debbie Notkin). This work went on to international exhibition, including the “Gender: Beyond Memory” exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 1996. Edison’s photographs have been exhibited in New York City, Tokyo, Kyoto, Toronto, Boston, London, and San Francisco. She is completing work of Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes, and has begun Women of Japan, clothed portraits of women from many cultures and backgrounds. She was in Japan in August 2001 for the exhibition “Meditations on the Body: Recent Work” at the National Museum of Art in Osaka.

The Female Gaze, Maryann Luera
Painter Maryann Luera turns the beam of objectified, idealized beauty back onto men with startling and sensually beautiful results. Over the centuries in the visual arts, men have objectified women through images of a male-determined idealized beauty. Taking up that mantle and taking her cues from fashion magazines like GQ, Luera flips the male
gaze on its head in her stunning renderings of male beauty. Luera’s exquisite technique and lush palette combine for strange and uncommonly seductive and compelling male portraits.

Maryann Luera’s work can be described as a series of intimate landscapes where the male figure attempts to reveal himself beyond social standards of masculinity. Incorporated in the work are figures dressed as priests, bullfighters and charros, all signifiers of a male dominated society. In the paintings, they are used as metaphors of sexual and social duality, both repressed and liberated by their assigned roles. The paintings endeavor to transcend visual and social representations, thereby unveiling inner human truths and desires.

WHOSE GAZE IS IT ANYWAY? Discussion
Laurie Toby Edison & Maryann Luera
Saturday, June 8; 2 pm
Location: SomArts, 934 Brannan @8th St

Photographer Laurie Toby Edison and painter Maryann Luera, both queer
women, have chosen to work artistically with images of men. In conjunction
with their exhibitions at the SomArts gallery, the two artists will discuss their work, and the reactions audiences have to it, contrasting Edison’s realistic black-and-white nude portraits with Luera’s stylized reimaginings of commercial and eroticized imagery.

Contested Flesh: Fags Dissect the Bawdy Politic of Body Politics
Jaime Cortez, moderator, Panelists: Rene Broussard, Pedro Bustos, Laurie Toby Edison, Professor Elias Farajaje-Jones, and Joel Tan Barraquiel
Sunday, June 9; 2pm
SomArts, 934 Brannan @ 8th St

Artist Barbara Kruger once wrote, “your body is a battleground.” She meant that to apply to women’s bodies, but the phrase also applies powerfully to the bodies of queer men. Our bodies are forever contested, legislated against, assaulted, ravaged, and glorified. Our bodies are also our centers of power and beauty, pleasure and knowledge. Four panelists will dissect the bawdy politic of fag flesh, addressing these and other contested areas: age, male cocks/pussies, HIV as biology and metaphor, melanin, muscles, and good fur/bad fur.

Panelists include: Rene Broussard, Pedro Bustos, Laurie Toby Edison, Professor Elias Farajaje-Jones, and Joel B. Tan. Artist and cultural worker Jaime Cortez will moderate the panel.

PEDRO BUSTOS AGUILAR, born in Morelia, Mexico, is a longtime SF resident, a writer and a weightlifter. He has published pieces on gay and lesbian politics and academics in scholarly and activist periodicals. His short story, Nueva Flor de Canela, was published in the 1999 Latino gay anthology Virgins, Guerrillas, and Locas. Aguilar has degrees in English and French from the State University of Veracruz inXalapa, Mexico, and has completed graduate studies in comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin.

RENE BROUSSARD is executive director of Zeitgeist Multidisciplinary Arts Center in New Orleans. Broussard founded Zeitgeist as a nonprofit artist-run center in November of 1986 when he was a student at the University of New Orleans. His video work includes the award-winning, three-part video diary THE FATBOY CHRONICLES, which has screened in over 80 festivals internationally. In his spare time, Rene is also an international nude male model having had photo shoots with artists in Toronto, Koln, New Orleans, and Berlin.

JAIME CORTEZ (moderator) is a writer, performer, visual artist and cultural worker based in the Mission District of San Francisco. He is the editor of the queer Latino anthology Virgins Guerrillas & Locas and has been anthologized in numerous collections, including 2sexE, Besame Mucho, and Queer Papi Porn. Jaime cofounded the comedy trio Latin Hustle, which mounted two successful productions at Theatre Rhinoceros. Jaime is currently the program manager at Galeria De La Raza.

LAURIE TOBY EDISON has been a photographer since 1989. In 1994 she published Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, a black & white fine art photography book (edited and text by Debbie Notkin). This work went on to international exhibition, including the “Gender: Beyond Memory” exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 1996. Edison’s photographs have been exhibited in New York City, Tokyo, Kyoto, Toronto, Boston, London, and San Francisco. She is completing work on
Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes, and has begun Women of Japan, clothed portraits of women from many cultures and backgrounds. She was in Japan in August 2001 for the exhibition “Meditations on the Body: Recent Work” at the National Museum of Art in Osaka.

PROF. DR. ELIYAHOU (ELIAS) FARAJAJÉ is a scholar, video-artist, queer/ bisexual activist, sex radical, body-piercing artist, HIV educator, and technician of the sacred. He earned his doctor of Theology (magna cum laude) in 1986 from the University of Bern, Switzerland, for his pioneering work on the construction of African diaspora identities. He was the first U.S.-born person of African descent to earn a doctorate from this university. He currently serves as Dean of the Faculty and Professor of cultural studies/queer theory/post-colonial theory at the Starr King School for the Ministry, Berkeley.

JOEL TAN-BARRAQUIEL has been published in several popular and academic anthologies including Asian American Sexualities (Routledge) and On a Bed of Rice: Asian American Erotica (Anchor). He is also the editor of Queer Papi Porn, a collection of Queer Asian and Pacific Islander erotica that won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Book. Joel gave the keynote address at the first-ever Queer Filipino Conference. Joel is currently compiling a poetry manuscript and collaborating with author Ginu Kamani on a piece that will premiere in 2002 at the Asian American Theater Company.