(r)EVOLUTION OF GENDER
RECEPTION FOR EG: (r)EVOLUTION OF GENDER
Visual Arts Exhibition Examining Gender Identity in the Queer Community
Friday, June 6th 6:00pm-7:30pm
SomArts/Rear Gallery
Gallery Admission is Free
Saturday, June 14th 3:00-5:00pm
Guided Tour & Discussion
SomArts/Rear Gallery
RECEPTION FOR EG: (r)EVOLUTION OF GENDER
Visual Arts Exhibition Examining Gender Identity in the Queer Community
Curated by: Eliot K Daughtry and Kriss De Jong of Killer Banshee Studios
Outside of constraint visited on mainstream concepts of gender, the queer continuum revels in paradox, defying definition. Presented as part of the National Queer Arts Festival 2003, EG: (r)Evolution of Gender tracks the influence of gender identity on artists and their work. In this curated exhibition, eight artists will show works with different perspectives on gender identity, roles and their own relative gender positions. Subject matter ranges from androgynous and deliberately non-gendered to the ephemera of gender transition. Some artists will show work from multiple series, revealing changes in their own experiences with gender. Others will display work that seeks to expand the boundaries of gender perception and self-identity.
Represented disciplines include photography, painting, multimedia and sculpture. Abstract narrative combines with found objects, reinterpretation, and the politic of theory. Each artist explores gender from a different point of view and cultural investment. Carland reinvents personal history by playing both the role of her mother and father, and Dowling suggests dualities created with prosthetics. Taylor and Jones use charged common objects to rework the lines of cultural politics in their art. De Jong and Michals create deliberate images of non-defined gender, while Nguyen and Daughtry chronicle a shift away from androgyny to explore male sexuality.
Artists:
Tammy Rae Carland
Photography
Carland exposes gender constructs expressed by queer youth, and plays both maternal and paternal roles in a reinvention of family history.
In her work identity is literally a trace, a linguistic sign or symbolic imprint, evidence via naming and association of what one is. She likes to make visual this riddle, this rhetoric mirror that tells us that a photograph is a sign of identity and that identity is assigned by photographs.
Founded Mr. Lady Records & videos and teaches at CCAC.
Eliot K Daughtry
Glass | Painting
Daughtry chronicles the change in self perception from pre to post transition, in abstract narrative.
His own life experiences have driven him deep into the exploration of gender in glass, wood and paint on panel, that delves into a dystopian experience of gender, male sexuality and identity that takes Pinnochio, Coyote, Joan of Arc and a World War I corporal as the avatars of deliverance.
Daughtry has shown around the United States including Washington DC, Chicago and The Bay Area. He is the co-owner of Killer Banshee Studios.
Kriss De Jong
Multimedia | Digital | Sculpture
Neither nor. Either or. None of the Above. All of the Above. Depends on the day. Muppet identified. Gender is a limitation, a box that she doesn’t fit in and don’t care to. She insists identity doesn’t require a gender.
De Jong creates abstract figures that defy gender categorization. These figures flow from her pen onto paper and are transformed into sculptural looking beings set into an urban surrounding.
De Jong has shown in the midwest and the Bay Area. She’s co-owner of Killer Banshee Studios.
Teri Claude Dowling
Photography | Sculpture
Dowling uses props, costumes and prosthetics to construct layered gender identities which are fluid and changeable. The boundaries of the physical body and its prosthetics merge until the biological boundaries of the body become irrelevant.
The furnishings series arose out of a desire to make images that explore the space between the genders, and the space between animate and inanimate objects.
She received her BS in Biology from UC Irvine, and earned an MFA in sculpture from CCAC. She has been a lesbian single mom for 10 years, but has just begun a domestic partnership with another long-time single mother. She and her partner are now raising their two 10-year-old boys together.
Dowling recently showed at Richmond Art Center.
Jordy Jones
Assemblage | Sculpture
Jones fabricates sculpture assemblages from the ephemera of female to male transition and life.
Longtime SF activist/artist, Jones has exhibited internationally including The De Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The LUX Gallery, London, and a work about Brandon Teena at the Guggenheim He is pursuing a Master’s degree in Museum Studies at SFSU and will begin doctoral work in 2003 in Visual Studies at the University of California at Irvine, where he will be a UC Chancellors Fellow and will write a dissertation cultural history of trans* communities.
Jenny Michals
Painting
Michals describes gender as a moving target in her paintings, creating art by distilling a sense of self through trickery.
A fluid perception of self is at the base of her work, including identification with one gender or another. The form of human emotions is nebulous, and she represents this world with beings, which are genderless, elongated and exaggerated.
Michals received her MFA from The Claremont Graduate University. She’s shown in solo and group exhibitions in California and beyond.
Hien Nguyen
Painting
Nguyen voyages from androgyny to explore the boundaries of homosexuality and religion– reassigning the Madonna’s gender.
Nguyen started out working with bald beings as subjects. They created a clone-like world where everyone is the same. There is no gender. There is no race. They could represent anyone. They could represent everyone. They could represent him.
He started to work with the Madonna and child image in where the Madonna icon has warped and transformed to represent various people, including the male figure, and is coveting different objects. His recent work embraces a world where everyone is a little different.
Tim Taylor
Sculpture
Taylor blends identity politics to create powerful works around race and gender. He has shown around the United States and in Japan.
Presently, he is curator of exhibitions at the San Francisco Airport Museums at the San Francisco International Airport. He is also curating the B/GLAM visual arts exhibition of Michael Ross’ work.
