A Spirit of Disruption

My collab video Abang-guard Work Habits: ARoS with artist Jevijoe Vitug is part of media in the round section of A Spirit of Disruption exhibition commemorating SFAI’s 150th anniversary. Curated by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur the show focuses on “celebrating the history of the institution and prioritizing untold stories from those who haven’t historically been included or made visible.” The exhibtion will be on view from March 19-July 3 and was currently featured in Hyperallergic.

Three Turns: Turn 2 at SFAI Towers

Featuring 26 artists, Three Turns stems from the concept that engaging artworks provide a viewer with three different entry points, prompting a deeper exploration into the work itself. Projected on the historic SFAI Tower at 800 Chestnut Street, which houses the Institution’s 150 year old archive, Three Turns will echo the notion of traveling three turns in time and space by showing the selected alumni video works on the Tower in dialogue with video works selected from the SFAI archive.

Archive works were selected by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, curators of the upcoming 150th anniversary exhibition Spirit of Disruption. My collab video with artist Jevijoe Vitug Abang-guard Work Habits was juxtaposed with Yin-Ju Chen’s Three Decades of Static. Props to artist Sholeh Asgary for creating the new soundtrack.

Empricial Noise Daily - Artist Feature

Honored to have my photography series “Dark Matter” featured in Empirical Nonsense Daily (END), an online art project, which will run for 365 consecutive days from August 1st, 2020 through July 31st, 2021.

The project was organized by the Empirical Nonsense (EN) team of Edward Joseph Rossa, Ethan Shoshan, and Katherine Wozniak as a response to “the constant barrage of terrible news reports alongside the closure of galleries, theaters, and music venues because of COVID-19.”

END features a different artist contribution every twenty-four hours for 184 days. The remaining 181 days will be dedicated to curated exhibitions. Through these small acts, established and emerging artists – some of who invited their friends – and artists who submitted their work through Empirical Nonsense’s website, unite in solidarity in an effort to offer everyone a chance to take refuge from today’s strenuous times.

The Brooklyn Rail - Art Seen

“Catbagan’s insurgent method of making time and meaning amid the durative is instructive for many of us now, as we each seek to work through the morass of upheaval and destruction…We work through much time and many thoughts with Catbagan, but how (like life) is up to us—we can move through them quickly or pause for more contemplation.” Amber Musser Jamilla writes about my recent painting/drawing series Notations, which are journalistic and diagrammatic interpolations of my daily thoughts and experiences that I have posted via Instagram @moofro.  

LOSS, A Virtual Exhibition - Woman Made Gallery

I’m excited to be part of this virtual group exhibition in Woman Made Gallery that is on view from September 4-27. "Every loss that we experience is individual, and how we navigate through it is also a varied experience. Those around us may try to comfort us in various ways, but often don’t know what to say or do, because we all experience grief or loss in different ways. Not only that, when we think of loss in the broader since of the word, that can encompass a great many other things. With the advent of Covid-19, some people are experiencing loss in the form of loved ones, jobs, divorce, businesses, independence, travel, family celebrations, and so on. How has loss impacted you?" -Felicia Grant Preston , Curator

Abang-guard Museum of Secret Talent - A Participatory Performance

As part of Flux Factory’s Remote Edition series, Abangguard duo Maureen Catbagan and Jevijoe Vitug will guide a participatory performance via Zoom on Thursday, August 6, from 7-9:30pm. During these intense and difficult times we find some solace and release through intangible personal knowledge, story telling, guilty pleasures, and modes of non-productivity. Abang-guard will host a digital museum space as a repository of hidden talent and secret expertise from artists including Sarah Dahlinger, Carlos  David TC, Shannon Stovall, Anthony Janas, Eleni Theodora Zaharopoulos, Jess Rolls, Hui-Ying Tsai, Sholeh Asgary, Julio Jose Austria + Patricia Lim and more..Followed by “open secret mic” participation

Follow @FluxFactory on Instagram for all updates.

Instagram essay of Notations Series by Amber Jamilla Musser

“The place where these images and words meet can always only be specific to every person’s history and memory; an elusiveness that illuminates the instability that all representation is built on. Words and images are always fictional attempts to produce communication.” Amber Jamilla Musser is is an Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University, who writes about race, aesthetics, and sexuality and is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU, 2014) and Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU, 2018). Her brief essay about my Notations series is on her Instagram @ a_jamilla.

Feature in Art Blog

My photography series “Dark Matter” was featured in Artblog’s ongoing virtual exhibition “Artists in the Time of the Coronavirus.” Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof launched Artblog in 2003 with a mission to share their intimate knowledge of Philadelphia's cutting edge art, and to educate and support a community of artists, art lovers, gallerists, critics and academics. Artblog was recognized for excellence twice by Art in America (2005, 2007) and has received grants from the Knight Foundation and elsewhere. Working as a team of writers and support staff, Artblog today is an educational laboratory and online archive generating ideas to connect the public with art.

Feature in The Empty Mirror

Established in May 2000 as a bookselling site specializing in collectible Beat Generation and small press poetry books, Empty Mirror soon morphed into a literary and arts site. It featured my Queer Film Stills series for its 2020 Pride Issue which was guest-edited by Danielle Rose.

Recipient of Critical Minded Relief Grant for Cultural Critics

It’s important that grant organizations recognize both the importance of critical POC work as well as acknowledge the economic precarity cultural workers often face. Critical Minded, a grantmaking and educational initiative that was founded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Ford Foundation to support cultural critics of color in the United States, has set up a new Covid-19 relief fund that aims to provide financial assistance to critics during the pandemic. “The time to turn back this wave of hate is now,” reads “United Against Hate: A Statement of Solidarity,” cited by Critical Minded when it announced the new fund. “Together, we can use the power of our collective voices to call for a more just, equal, and inclusive society.” 

Acts of Refusal

This is a portrait of Richie, who is part of the HOWDOSAYYAMINAFRICAN? Collective, during the time when Michael Brown was fatally shot by the Ferguson Police. Richie’s back was turned away as an act of refusal to America’s consistent violence and denial of humanity towards Black lives. Police deaths continued with Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and countless others both known and unknown. Now it’s 2020, and the list still goes on with Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd tearing open again and again the wound that hasn’t healed, that will never heal until the denial stops and true accountability begins…

PXALM - Eclipse

During this precarious downtime, I started working on a music video for my latest music collaboration, PXALM, with Angel Favorite and Lee Sobarzo. Gleaning from the public domain videos from the Prelinger Collection in archive.org, I was able to find hypnotic footage that reflected the dark romantic mood that I wanted to imbue. Working on this song felt apropos as it reminded me to remain tender and that everyone is needed to crease these times of fury and helplessness.

Art Feature in the Immigrant Artist Biennial

Grateful that The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) featured my work in their instagram in April. TIAB is a multi site artist-run project, presenting work by U.S based immigrant artists from around the world. To be presented in New York City every two years, TIAB sets out to form an international dialogue through exhibition of ambitious projects and events with an aim to facilitate a diverse and experimental discourse as well as build a globally connected and united community in the times of extreme anti-immigrant sentiment, unrest, discrimination and exclusion. For more information about their exhibitions and events visit their site www.theimmigrantartistbiennial.com

The unseen that holds all that is seen

Dark Matter - doorway, art object shadow, guard’s foot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This series is a meditation on the question of representation and the perceptual conditions that enable us to see not only art, but also multiple forms of difference. I photograph staircases, ceilings, passageways, and guards within museums, essential components that are seldom considered. They occupy a complicated relationship to functionality and value, much like the conditions of labor within capital. These triptychs center and translate peripheral bodies and spaces into alternate forms of possibility and agency by activating strategies of temporal looping, listening, and shadow work. I approach representation through sensation, in order to perceive the fullness of what is absent within the Western frame. These aesthetic disruptions shift dominant paradigms of objectification and labor to produce radical reorientations.

PINK MOON BIRTHDAY

Yesterday I felt complicated about my birthday during Corona time…During the day, I Facetimed with my family, and in the evening, I blew out the candles from the chocolate cake that Molly made for me from scratch while my friends watched from gridded screens. I felt grateful to have this moment with them while also feeling the unfathomable loss of the 731 who died in New York during the day. Words couldn’t come and a lump formed in my throat. I walked out to the dark yard and watched the moon move between the clouds and tree webs. The moon and I looked at each other wondering what we thought of all of this. Tonight is one of its closest times to the earth yet the distance is palpable…

In the meantime...

While the world seems to have stopped, uncertain, about everything we’ve known, not knowing what will happen next, while waiting inside, I look back at my journals marking the passing of certain days, how I took notes of things seen, heard, and read…encounters of certain moments found in translation…