Local Emerging Artists Present Contemporary Perspectives on Queer Identity

Simon Garcia-Miñaur, Welcome to Introduction to Fractal Sex (Video still), 2015, HD video, Single Channel

Inspired by philosopher Herbert Marcuse's notion of "the great refusal," Embark’s latest exhibition Get Lost showcases contemporary takes on queer identity politics. By challenging the representational imagery that queer art is perhaps best known for, these artists present a new understanding of the self through displacement and absence, suggesting that queer activism in the digital age may take more nuanced forms of expression.

The video work of Simón Garcia-Miñaur (SFAI) features the inaccessible body, mystifying the shared sexual experience and using technology to speak to invisibility in queer relationships. These short fiction films deny the viewer access to their preconceived notions of human interaction and sex, further queering the queer body through digital rendering. Courtney Trouble (CCA) also uses techniques of erasure politically, literally grinding up photographs of queer bodies and spaces into dust. Through this transformation of subject to object to abstraction, she takes the medium of photography which is so essential to the history of queer art, and makes it fragile, fleeting and thoroughly unrecognizable.

Izidora Leber (SFAI) presents a textual piece in several forms: spoken word, video and installation. The work, titled A rumination of the queer body in documentary and video making history - and suggestions of how to get lost as a concept for identitarian escape is informed by the idea of hybridity and aims to disrupt normative categorizations of identity. Richard-Jonathan Nelson challenges the assumed roles of black queer bodies via vibrantly colored textiles. His digital collages and soft sculptures refuse heteronormative ideals and present a multifaceted and nuanced perspective on queer masculinity and racial power structures in the queer community.

This exhibition was juried by Avram Finkelstein, a founding member of the collective responsible for the Silence=Death poster, and of the art collective, Gran Fury, with whom he collaborated on public art commissions for international institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Venice Biennale, ArtForum, MOCA LA, The New Museum, and The Public Art Fund.

Embark Gallery offers exhibition opportunities to graduate students of the Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. We provide a space for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and we aim to expand the audience for up and coming contemporary art. The juried exhibitions are held at our gallery in San Francisco at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.