Image credit: A set of Boy/Girl With Arms Akimbo “SAFE/UNSAFE” posters on a wall in San Francisco in June, 1990; photographer unknown, Boy With Arms Akimbo/Girl With Arms Akimbo Records (1996-41), GLBT Historical Society.
What about art? This second panel on the role of art and artists in a pandemic continues the discussion of our April 8 event. An intergenerational panel of Bay Area artists and curators will gather to explore ways in which artists responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and how these experiences might inform artistic responses to COVID-19 today. Panelists will also discuss the personal and cultural impacts of living through a pandemic, and how these impacts might constrain or inspire the creative process.
Our “Fighting Back” series is an intergenerational discussion that brings together community leaders, experts, historians and activists to explore lessons from the past that might be useful in formulating “resistance” efforts today.
SPEAKERS
Joseph Abbati’s work addresses social identity and the human condition. In 2017, Joseph Abbati had his first solo exhibit at Strut presenting a collection of portraits of San Francisco drag queens made into tapestries titled “LARGER THAN LIFE.” Later in 2017, he was invited to exhibit his work at the office of Senator Scott Wiener in the State of California Building in San Francisco for Pride month. He then started curating on a regular basis for the senator’s office and promoting the work of San Francisco Bay Area artists. “Queeries,” Joseph Abbati’s exhibit at Strut in March and April 2020, is his inquiry on the masculine figure and forms of expression from a queer point of view. The paintings in this exhibit reveal masculine forms depicting queer identity, kinks and beauty.
Terry Beswick (moderator) has served as executive director of the GLBT Historical Society since 2016. At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, he was a founding member of the local ACT UP and was the first national coordinator of ACT NOW, the national AIDS activist network. He advocated for HIV/AIDS research and treatment with Project Inform, the Human Rights Campaign and the White House Office of HIV/AIDS Policy. After the advent of effective treatments for HIV, Beswick worked as a journalist for the Bay Area Reporter and other LGBTQ community publications. More recently, he spearheaded a successful campaign to save and renovate the Castro Country Club for the queer recovery community and co-founded the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. He holds an MFA in playwriting from San Francisco State University. Beswick has been named a Community Grand Marshal for the 50th Anniversary San Francisco LGBTQ Pride Parade and Celebration in 2020.
Lenore Chinn is a painter, photographer and cultural activist who works to create structures of personal and institutional support that both sustain critical artistic production and advance movements for social justice. Portraiture, both in painting and photography, is at the core of her visual art practice. Her current street photography chronicles a rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape. A San Francisco native, she was a founding member of Lesbians in the Visual Arts, a co-founder of the Queer Cultural Center and has been active in the Asian American Women Artists Association since the group was founded.
Katie Conry has served as the Tenderloin Museum’s executive director since 2016 and has cemented TLM’s identity as a destination for community-based, historically-inspired arts programs with a dynamic vision for neighborhood-centric, diverse programs that bring people together from all walks of life. Along with weekly public programming and exhibitions, she led TLM’s production of two major, critically-acclaimed performance projects: “The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot” play and the “Tender” aerial dance with Flyaway Productions.
E.G. Crichton is an interdisciplinary artist who lives in San Francisco. She is emerita professor of art at the University of California Santa Cruz, and has served as artist-in-residence for the GLBT Historical Society. Her work uses a range of art strategies to explore social issues and history, and she often collaborates with visual artists, performers, writers, scientists, composers and others. Her work has been exhibited in Asia, Australia, Europe and across the United States.
Leo Herrera is a Mexican self-taught visual artist, activist and writer based in San Francisco. His work focuses on the American queer experience, politics and history. His short, viral films have been seen by millions, featured in global media outlets and museum exhibits. Leo’s current passion project is “Fathers,” a sci-fi documentary web series and multimedia project that imagines the world if AIDS never existed and a generation had lived. Weaving real-life events, survivor histories and fictionalized events, “Fathers” creates a surreal vision of an alternative universe.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
This event will take place online. After you register, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and instructions on how to join the Zoom webinar as an attendee. The event will also be livestreamed, and then archived, on our YouTube page at https://bit.ly/2UyGVbG.
ADMISSION
Free | Suggested donation of $5.00
Register online here: https://bit.ly/2S0cJ7J
The event is limited to 500 attendees.
JOIN THE GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks: www.glbthistory.org/memberships