ANTI•VENOM – Allies in Arts

ANTI • VENOM

Presented by Allies in Arts

Lower Gallery at The Arts Center at Governors Island

ANTI • VENOM brings together seven multidisciplinary artists to ask: How do we affirm our humanity in the face of complex harm? In this luminous exhibition of videos, the artists face a troubled reality and transform it. With immersive works in one, two and three channels, the artists direct our gaze towards radiant visions of the future. 

As bill-after-bill emerges to criminalize trans and queer bodies, Jacolby Satterwhite's opalescent communities vogue a narrative of interconnectedness, warning that we are in a malignant hell when we hurt each other. Conditions of harm are met with arresting beauty as cobalt and indigo spill out from the installation by Le'Andra LeSeur. Amelia Winger-Bearskin's layered videos, glitch rainbows and dissolve architectures with AI. Joaquin Trujillo reclaims the scapegoated old man in El Viejo. Adorned in red velvet, silver bells and a confetti of ribbons, Trujillo dances a path of return for dispossessed queers. In this year of the rabbit, Andrew Thomas Huang’s muse is a humble young restaurant worker. Through Thomas Huang’s lens, the banality of Matt’s life is beautifully disrupted when he is seduced by an alluring God from the Qing dynasty. In Corinne Spencer’s mesmerizing installation, Black feminine subjects care for one another across generations of life and death. In Sankofa, a Ghanaian principle that represents returning to the past in order to inform a better future, Anna Parisi places viewers in the politicized terrain of Black hair.  

The magical quality of the pieces in this show draws from the specific communities the artists are rooted in. And yet, the hermetic power of these artworks extends far beyond the specific. We hope that many needed antidotes might be found in this exhibition experience.

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.