Past Event
This conversation explores how queerness has impacted on and informed the art world – from artistic practice to critical discourse – considered from the perspective of the artist.
Shifted from a derogatory slur, to a badge of honour, artists who identify their practices as ‘queer’ today call forth utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships, relationships, loves, and communities.
Launching Queer, the latest book in the Documents of Contemporary Art series published by the Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, the discussion is led by David J Getsy (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and includes artists Emily Roysdon and Prem Sahib.
Documents of Contemporary Art are published by the Whitechapel Gallery and MIT press. See the full series of books here.
David J. Getsy is Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His books include Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender, Scott Burton: Collected Writings on Art and Performance, and Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture.
Emily Roysdon is a New York and Stockholm-based artist and writer. Recent solo projects include new commissions from Secession, Vienna; Performance Room, Tate Modern, London; If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam; and The Kitchen, New York. Roysdon’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the 2010 Whitney Biennial, New York; Greater New York at MoMA PS1; The Generational, New Museum, New York; Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Power Plant, Toronto; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
In 2012 Roysdon was a finalist for the Future Generation Art Prize, exhibiting in Kiev and the Venice Biennale. Her work is in the public collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, among others. She completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001 and an Interdisciplinary MFA at UCLA in 2006, and is a Professor of Art at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden.
Prem Sahib was born in London in 1982. He lives and works in London.
Forthcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: Prem Sahib in collaboration with Celia Hempton, Southard Reid, London, UK (2016); Side On, ICA, London, END UP, Southard Reid, I am here but you’ve gone, curated by Milovan Farronato and Stella Bottai, (2015); performance and presentation of work made in Stromboli as part of Forget Amnesia curated by Milovan Farronato and Haroon Mirza, Fiorucci Trust, Italy, Tongues, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai (2014). Night Flies, Southard Reid, London, Back Chat, Lorcan O’Neill Gallery, Rome (2013) and Home From Home, Arts & Jobs, London, He Looked Me Up, Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam, and FEEL UP in collaboration with Eddie Peake, Southard Reid, London (2012).
