In this luminous exhibition of videos, the artists face a troubled reality and transform it. With immersive works in one, two and three channels, the artists direct our gaze towards radiant visions of the future.
As bill-after-bill emerges to criminalize trans and queer bodies, Jacolby Satterwhite's opalescent communities vogue a narrative of interconnectedness, warning that we are in a malignant hell when we hurt each other. Conditions of harm are met with arresting beauty as cobalt and indigo spill out from the installation by Le'Andra LeSeur. Amelia Winger-Bearskin's layered videos, glitch rainbows and dissolve architectures with AI. Joaquin Trujillo reclaims the scapegoated old man in El Viejo (The Old Man). Adorned in red velvet, silver bells and a confetti of ribbons, Trujillo dances a path of return for dispossessed queers. In this year of the rabbit, Andrew Thomas Huang’s muse is a humble young restaurant worker. Through Thomas Huang’s lens, the banality of Matt’s life is beautifully disrupted when he is seduced by an alluring God from the Qing dynasty. In Corinne Spencer’s mesmerizing installation, Black feminine subjects care for one another across generations of life and death. In Sankofa, a Ghanaian principle that represents returning to the past in order to inform a better future, Anna Parisi places viewers in the politicized terrain of Black hair.
The magical quality of the pieces in this show draws from the specific communities the artists are rooted in. And yet, the hermetic power of these artworks extends far beyond the specific. We hope that many needed antidotes might be found in this exhibition experience.
Artists: Andrew Thomas Huang, Le’Andra LeSeur, Anna Parisi, Jacolby Satterwhite, Corinne Spencer, Joaquin Trujillo, Amelia Winger-Bearskin
Anti•Venom is curated by Sophia Wallace and Drew Denny of Allies in Arts.
Andrew Thomas Huang
The Kiss of the Rabbit God, 2019
Single-channel video
14m 39s
Andrew Thomas Huang is a visual artist, writer and director who crafts hybrid fantasy worlds and mythical dreamscapes. Known for his Grammy nominated music videos of Björk, FKA twigs and Thom Yorke, Huang is also recognized as a writer and director of narrative film. His work has been commissioned by and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Sydney Opera House and the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA. Inspired by his queer Chinese heritage, Huang’s work mines the unconscious realms to blend technology, mysticism, future folklore and queer spirituality.
Le’Andra LeSeur
Superwoman, 2018
Three-channel video
6m 48s
In Reverence (An Honoring), 2018
Single-channel video
7m 58s
Death by way of a beat... birth by way of a rhythm, 2023
Neon
116in. x 6in.
Freedom like a breath... all blue, 2023
Neon
60in. x 6in.
Le’Andra LeSeur is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses video, installation, photography, painting, and performance. LeSeur’s body of work is a celebration of Blackness, queerness, and femininity that seeks to dismantle systems of power in order to achieve transcendence and liberation through perseverance. By inserting her body and voice into her work, LeSeur provides her audience with an opportunity to contemplate themes such as identity, family, Black grief and joy, the experience of invisibility, and what it means to take up space as a queer Black woman—a rejection of the stereotypes which attempt to push these identities to the margins.
lleseur.com/
instagram.com/ellechien
Anna Parisi
Anna Parisi is an Afro-Brazilian interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator working with collage, sculpture, performance, and video. Through Parisi’s practice she invokes and evokes cathartic experiences and conversations around politics, creating space for self-reflection, vulnerability, and healing. Opposing the violences that have systematically oppressed BIPOC heritage, livelihood, and futures inspires her artistic practice.
annaparisi.site
instagram.com/aluparisi
Jacolby Satterwhite
We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other, 2020
Single-channel 3D animation
24m 22s
© Jacolby Satterwhite; Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
Jacolby Satterwhite is celebrated for a conceptual practice addressing crucial themes of labor, consumption, carnality and fantasy through immersive installation, virtual reality and digital media. Satterwhite uses a range of software to produce intricately detailed animations and live action films of real and imagined worlds populated by the avatars of artists and friends. These animations serve as the stage on which the artist synthesizes the multiple disciplines that encompass his practice, namely illustration, performance, painting, sculpture, photography and writing.
Corinne Spencer
HUNGER, 2019
Three-channel video
13m 36s
Corinne Spencer creates video art, photography, and installations which are rooted in an exploration of the spiritual, interior world of Black women and the Black feminine body as it moves through space, across time and history. In a world that has caused untold harm to them, the subjects in Spencer’s work emphatically choose to live. Often utilizing fabric, dance, and the natural environment in her work, Spencer boldly claims the centrality of Black feminine subjectivity, moving beyond the position of outsider to reveal each subject as a universe inside herself. In Spencer’s oeuvre, softness, emotion, femininity and beauty repossess their rightful position, primordial, eminent.
corinnespencer.com
instagram.com/corinneospencer
Joaquin Trujillo
El Viejo (The Old Man), 2016 - 2022
Single-channel, double-channel video
17m 30s
Joaquin Trujillo is an artist, curator, editor who uses the camera to reconstruct the past—to fill in the gaps. He imports a body of work and a worldview inflected with a freshness of vision and technique. His potent yet subtle approach to color and texture emulates a structured slippage of heritage. Building upon the dichotomy of his Mexican heritage and American education, he weaves together an uncanny modality of childhood innocence across culture, place and time.
Amelia Winger-Bearskin
MIDNIGHT, 2023
Digital image interpolation, landscape photographs, video
24m 59s
TO BODY, 2023
Painting, video, sound
24m 59s
Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that make a positive impact on our community and the environment. Working individually and collectively, Winger-Bearskin abstracts and concretizes environmental data through video installation, live data visualizations, storytelling and performance.