Painters Christina Quarles and Jenna Gribbon join curator and host Gemma Rolls-Bentley in discussing their methods for constructing queerness in their lives and artworks, the importance of holding a viewers gaze, lesbian intensity, and CAMP! This episodes title is a line from “School Note,” a poem by Audre Lorde.

Jenna Gribbon’s oil paintings constitute an important new entry in the long lineage of figurative art, extending its narrative possibilities to explore the act of looking. Her vivid portraits, frequently nudes or partial nudes, depict those closest to her, and sometimes the artist herself, in candid poses, during uncanny moments. Her recent work most prominently features her partner, Mackenzie Scott, whose recurrence both personalizes and simultaneously establishes her as a kind of avatar; shifting the focus of the painting away from the figure and toward the way the figure is framed. By painting otherwise fleeting scenes, the artist adds texture, depth, and a sense of permanency to these temporal images, highlighting themes of pleasure, joy, and expanding the lexicon of queer iconography. Recent exhibitions include Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters, The Frick Collection, New York (2022); and I will wear you in my heart of heart, FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2021); and Paint, also known as Blood: Women, Affect and Desire in Contemporary Painting, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Poland (2019). Find her on IG @jennagribbon.

Christina Quarles lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art in 2016 and holds a B.A. from Hampshire College. Quarles was a 2016 participant at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. She was the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Pérez Art Museum Miami Prize and in 2017 she received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. In 2021 Quarles joined the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Learn more about her practice at www.christinaquarles.com. Find her on IG @cequarles.

Christina's work in the exhibition, Tilt/Shift, is acrylic on canvas, see the work here.

Jenna's works, Me looking at her looking at me, and To share a common memory, are two of three pieces in the exhibition.

A full transcript of the episode is available here.

This podcast series is produced by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Dreaming of Home is on view September 7–January 7, 2024. Learn more about the show at leslielohman.org/exhibitions/dreaming-of-home

Show music: Fantasy Island Obsession by Tom Rasmussen ft. Kai-Isaiah Jamal, with thanks to Globe Town Records.

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"The image is the least important thing about what went on."

Photographers Rene Matić and Clifford Prince King explore the risks and rewards of photography, lenses of love and connection, and the power of preserving community through imaging à la Nan Goldin and Catherine Opie, with host Gemma Rolls-Bentley.

Clifford Prince King is an artist living and working in New York and Los Angeles. He documents his intimate relationships in traditional, everyday settings that speak on his experiences as a queer black man. In these instances, communion begins to morph into an offering of memory; it is how he honors and celebrates the reality of layered personhood. Within Clifford's images are nods to the beyond. Shared offerings to the past manifest in codes hidden in plain sight, known only to those who sit within a shared place of knowledge. Learn more about his practice at www.cliffordprinceking.com. Find him on IG at @cliffordprinceking.

Rene Matić is a London-based artist and writer whose practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as "rude(ness)" - an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. Rene draws inspiration from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone as a tool to delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, whilst privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival. Learn more about their practice at www.renematic.com. Find them on IG at @rene.matic.

A full transcript of the episode is available here.

Rene's exhibition kiss them from me runs until December 9, 2023, at Chapter, NY. Their new commission Mid Land is on view at The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum as a part of Coventry Biennial 2023.

Clifford's exhibition keep a place for me, with Ryan Patrick Krueger, is on view at Rivalry Projects, Buffalo, NY, through December 20, 2023.

This podcast series is produced by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Dreaming of Home is on view September 7–January 7, 2024. Learn more about the show at leslielohman.org/exhibitions/dreaming-of-home

Show music: Fantasy Island Obsession by Tom Rasmussen ft. Kai-Isaiah Jamal

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do we reclaim traditions of home for our queer futures? Artists Leilah Babirye and Chiffon Thomas and host Gemma Rolls-Bentley discuss reconstructing the self, the permanence of lineage, and the historic weight of the heirlooms and materials they gravitate to in their sculptures.

Chiffon Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, incorporating embroidery, collage, drawing, and sculpture to explore the self as split, fractured, and transforming. Thomas contends with the crafted body in his work, examining wider issues of gender, race, and sexuality. Thomas holds an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is currently on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum for his first solo museum exhibition, The Cavernous, and at the Hammer Museum for Made in LA 2023. Learn more about his practice at www.chiffonthomas.com. Find him on IG @c.chronicles

The multidisciplinary practice of Leilah Babirye (b. 1985, Kampala) transforms everyday materials into objects that address issues surrounding identity, sexuality and human rights. The artist fled her native Uganda to New York in 2015 after being publicly outed in a local newspaper. In spring 2018, Babirye was granted asylum with support from the African Services Committee and the NYC Anti-Violence Project. Composed of debris collected from the streets of New York, Babirye’s sculptures are woven, whittled, welded, burned and burnished. Her choice to use discarded materials in her work is intentional – the pejorative term for a gay person in the Luganda language is ‘ebisiyaga’, meaning ‘sugarcane husk’. ‘It’s rubbish,’ explains Babirye, ‘the part of the sugarcane you throw out.’ Learn more about her practice at www.stephenfriedman.com/artists/66-leilah-babirye. Find her on IG @babiryesculptor

Chiffon's piece Rosenwald is made of cement blocks, bible skins, and thread, see the work here.

Leilah's piece Nansamba O'we Ngabi from the Kuchu Antelope Clan is one of three works in the exhibition, made of glazed ceramic and found objects, see the work here.

A full transcript of the episode is available here.

This podcast series is produced by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Dreaming of Home is on view September 7–January 7, 2024. Learn more about the show at leslielohman.org/exhibitions/dreaming-of-home

Show music: Fantasy Island Obsession by Tom Rasmussen ft. Kai-Isaiah Jamal

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.