Allies in Arts presents MICRODOSES
September 16, 2-7:30pm
The Arts Center at Governors Island
110 Andes Road, Governors Island, 10004 [map]
Join Allies in Arts and LMCC on Saturday, September 16 from 2-7pm for a full day of artist talks, performances, readings, and a special DJ set to celebrate the exhibition ANTI•VENOM. Each of the programs featured offers a microdose toward collective healing.
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Artist Talk with Joaquin Trujillo
Joaquin Trujillo will be conversation with curator Sofía Shaula Reeser-del Rio
The Heartbr(ache) Club
All following programs are organized by Le’Andra LeSeur and Ksenia M. Soboleva, creators of The Heartbr(ache) Club.
3:30 - 4:00 PM
Poetry reading with Sadé Powell
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
The Heartbr(ache) Club conversation with Le'Andra LeSeur and Ksenia M. Soboleva
The Heartbr(ache) Club is a collaboration between Le'Andra LeSeur and Ksenia M. Soboleva, that takes the form of a curatorial initiative and an oral history project. Taking heartbr(ache) as the starting point for an ongoing dialogue on queer identity, LeSeur and Soboleva have been collecting heartbr(ache) stories that deepen our understanding of physical and platonic intimacy, both between people and with the world at large. Negating the notion of being broken open as a finale, LeSeur and Soboleva consider the generative potential of aching, and suggest heartbr(ache) as a precondition for living a queer life.
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Performance by Reed Rushes
<3 of matter is a new work from Reed Rushes. Working as their persona, Stan, ‘<3 of matter’ is part of Stan’s creation story. It taps into his dusty beginnings on this planet, his search for body, his search for desire. Following lust, Stan is drawn to the towns, drawn to the cities. Video work made in collaboration with Houari Bouchenak, performance made in collaboration with Kate Williams.
<3 of matter will include nudity and may not be suitable for all audiences.
6:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Performance by LaWhore Vagistan
6:30 PM
DJ set by MUSE(O)FIRE
ANTI•VENOM is curated by Sophia Wallace and Drew Denny of Allies in Arts.
Allies in Arts is a trans and queer led 501c3 non profit organization dedicated to supporting artists of all mediums who identify as women, BIPOC and LGBTQQIA2S+ through exhibitions, screenings, grants, and fairly paid commissions. Allies in Arts also houses Transanta, a trans led mutual aid project that supports trans youth through the holiday season. In 2023, Allies in Arts is launching our first ever educational program, the Transanta writing workshop, in which a class from the 4,000 trans youth who have participated in Transanta thus far will be given college level writing instruction, given an opportunity to read their work aloud at the Hammer Museum, and have their work published in our first book
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.
Sofía Shaula Reeser del Rio is a Puerto Rican scholar, curator, multidisciplinary artist, and educator. With an MA from the Sur Escuela, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, and a BFA from Pratt Institute, she has organized and produced several major exhibitions with a special focus on Latinx, Latin American, and Caribbean artists, particularly supporting LGBTQIA+ and self-identified female artists from PR. As part of her curatorial tenure (2012-2017) at El Museo del Barrio in NY, she coordinated and assisted in organizing over thirty exhibitions and numerous public programs, artists’ projects, site-specific installations, and off-site special projects. She has organized exhibitions at Museo Memoria y Tolerancia (Mexico), Casa de Africa (Cuba), Bronx Art Space, and the Julia de Burgos Art Center (NY). Her practice is based between Puerto Rico, Madrid, and NYC. She has held curatorial positions at El Museo del barrio, Americas Society and is currently working at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, NY.
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.
Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York based writer and art historian specializing in queer art and culture. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with a dissertation titled "Fragments: Art, AIDS, and Lesbian Identity in the United States." Her writings have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, Artforum, Hyperallergic, as well as various monographs and exhibition catalogs. She has curated exhibitions at Candice Madey Gallery, La MaMa Galleria, and Assembly Room. Soboleva was the 2020-2021 Vilcek Curatorial Fellow at the Guggenheim Museum, where she assisted in organizing the Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks exhibition. She is the recipient of the Baxter St. Camera Club of New York 2022 Guest Curatorial Initiative, where she will be opening an exhibition of photographs by Rachel Stern, titled “One Must Not Look At Anything.” She is also co-editing (together with Svetlana Kitto) the first monograph on TRIAL BALLOON, the lesbian 1990s gallery and project space founded by Nicola Tyson. She is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and LGBTQ+ History at the New York Historical Society.
sadé powell is a visual and concrete poet from nyc. inspired by her upbringing, she uses the sonic, kinesthetic, and linguistic elements of her 1940s royal typewriter to explore dissemblance as black feminist poethics. sadé holds an ma in performance studies from nyu tisch. her work has been supported by The Poetry Project, Triple Canopy, Center for Book Arts, Kolaj Magazine, and Hand Papermaking Magazine to name a few. her chapbook wordtomydead is currently available with Ugly Duckling Presse.
Reed Rushes is a British/American performance artist living and working in Queens, New York. Described by Exeunt Magazine as “following in the lineage of queer performance,” their work is concerned with queer identity and world building. Their largest collaboration to date, “Sensitive Plumbing” described as ”defying the boundaries of skin, enacting solidarity instead,” emerged from a series of workshop they lead for self-identified transmasc, queer and dyke artists. Exploring myth and fable through a queer lens, Rushes unpacks power structures as they relate to capitalism, gender and climate chaos. At the heart of their practice is a search for collaboration and connection.
LaWhore Vagistan is everyone's favorite overdressed, overeducated, oversaturated South Asian drag aunty. Her music videos have screened at the Mississauga South Asian Film Festival, Austin OUTsider multi-arts festival, Hyderabad Queer Film Festival, and San Francisco 3rd i film festival. She has performed at the Austin International Drag Festival, Mustard Seed South Asian Film Festival, The Asia Society, AS220, Queens Museum, Jack Theater, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Not Festival, Links Hall, and A.R.T. Oberon. You can find her on YouTube delivering a TEDx Talk titled "How to be an Aunty" and on Instagram at @lawhorevagistan.
MUSE(O)FIRE is a Maryland born, Brooklyn based DJ and Interdisciplinary artist with a love for booty shaking beats and world rhythms.MUSE(O)FIRE embraces Black Indigenous forms of musical expression with a focus on Black Queer and Trans artists and audiences;and sees the dancefloor as a needed space of liberation. Their infectious smile and energy will lift your spirits and command you to the dance floor. Muse has played both local and internationally at venues including NoBar, Mood Ring, Pioneer Works,H0L0, MOCADA, The Shed, The ARoS Museum (Denmark) Basquiat's Bottle,Good Judy, The Bush, The Pinhook (Durham), Starr Bar, 3 Dollar Bill, Starr Bar and The Black Cat (D.C.).