Radical art show exploring sex and gender opens in New York
- Text by HUCK HQ
A major new exhibition exploring gender’s place in contemporary culture is opening at New York’s New Museum this week. The show, titled Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, celebrates radical artists who are looking beyond the binary and adopting “more fluid and inclusive expressions” of identity.
More than 40 artists working across film, video, performance, painting, sculpture and photography are set to be featured. This includes up and coming artists Sable Elyse Smith and Paul Mpagi Sepuya; activists Vaginal Davis and Nancy Brooks Brody; as well as more established names like Josh Faught and Reina Gossett. The work will vary from the political to the poetic.
“Representing no single point of view, and in some cases presenting productively contradictory positions, Trigger will assemble artists for their singular efforts in considering gender’s capacity to represent a more general refusal of stable categorisation—a refusal at the heart of today’s most compelling artistic practices,” a spokesperson for the museum explained in a statement.
Trigger will occupy three floors of the New Museum, and will be on view from September 27 to January 21, 2018.
Troy Michie, Arroyo, 2015. Courtesy the artist
Simone Leigh, Queen Bee, 2008–2012. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
Christina Quarles, We Gunna Live With Water Fer Tha Resta Our Lives, 2017. Courtesy the artist and David Castillo Gallery, Miami
Tuesday Smillie, Street Transvestites, 2015. Textile, beads, buttons, bits, 48 × 83 in (121.9 × 210.8 cm). Courtesy the artist
Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Darkroom Mirror (0X5A1531), 2017. Archival pigment print, 51 × 34 in (129.5 × 86.4 cm). Courtesy the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York
Tschabalala Self, Loner, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Thierry Goldberg, New York
Tschabalala Self, Floor Dance, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Thierry Goldberg, New York
Troy Michie, Nobody Knows My Name, 2015. Courtesy the artist
Christina Quarles, Butt Hidden in Lacy Groves (Hell Must Be a Pretty Place, Fire n’ Brimestone Allright…), 2017. Courtesy the artist and David Castillo Gallery, Miami
Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon will run at New York’s New Museum from September 27, 2017–January 21, 2018.
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