Panel discussion featuring Cassils, Laura Gutierrez, and Alpesh Patel
(image above) Cassils in collaboration with Rafa Esparza, Fanaa and Keijaun Thomas, “Solution”, Performance at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art 2018, photo by Alejandro Santiago
The Station Museum of Contemporary Art and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University are proud to announce a panel discussion featuring Cassils, Laura Gutierrez, and Alpesh Patel in conjunction with Cassils’s solo exhibition Solutions on view until March 3rd at the Station Museum. The discussion will take place on Wednesday, February 27th at 6PM at Rice University in Humanities Building room 117. Panelists will discuss the ways in which artists speak truth to power, especially in relation to the United States’ current political climate with attention to the way culture wars and religious freedoms are being used to usurp civil rights. The event is free and open to the public.
Solutions is a politically timely and formally arresting retrospective of the work of Cassils. Amidst the raging culture war being waged in the United States, Solutions mobilizes the interior architecture of the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, an exhibition space modelled after the Greek Temple of Athena, Goddess of War. Currently in the US, the rhetoric of “religious freedom” is being used as justification for curtailing the civil rights of minoritized groups.
Based in Los Angeles and from Montreal, Cassils is listed by the Huffington Post as “one of ten transgender artists who are changing the landscape of contemporary art.” Cassils has achieved international recognition for a rigorous engagement with the body as a form of social sculpture. Featuring a series of bodies transformed by strict physical training regimes, Cassils’ artworks offer shared experiences for contemplating histories of violence, representation, struggle, and survival. It is with sweat, blood and sinew that they construct a visual critique around ideologies and histories.
Dr. Alpesh Kantilal Patel is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. His art historical scholarship, criticism and curating reflects his queer, anti-racist, and transnational approach to contemporary art. The author of Productive failure: writing queer transnational South Asian art histories (Manchester University Press, 2017), he is a frequent contributor to artforum.com among other venues. You may find out more here: https://www.alpeshkpatel.com.
Laura G. Gutiérrez is Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are performance studies, visual culture studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and critical race theory. She is the author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage. She is on the board of directors of OUTsider, an Austin-based queer multimedia arts organization and is the coordinator of its academic component of the festival, Conference on the Couch.
The Station Museum of Contemporary Art organizes exhibitions that question our society’s morality and ethics. It embraces the idea that art plays a critical role in society as an agent of creativity and civil discourse and as a resource that deepens and broadens public awareness of the cultural, political, economic, and personal dimensions of art.
The Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University fosters interdisciplinary academic programs and research intensive opportunities. The Center’s goal is to make a better world by promoting critical knowledge and relationships with communities that extend our understanding of the lives of women, the history and politics of sexuality, and gender as a key influence on the quality of life. Learn more at https://cswgs.rice.edu.
