The following is a review of the SIDE X SIDE exhibition and reading.
The Politic of Memory
Alan Gilbert
Dean Daderko is an imaginative and adventurous independent curator working in New York City. A few years back, he turned the living room of his ground-floor Brooklyn apartment into one of the more interesting alternative art spaces in the city.
Parlour Projects hosted solo and multi-artist shows, performances, screenings, even a reading group. Parlour Projects is closed, but Daderko continues to curate various exhibitions around the city. His most recent one, sponsored by Visual AIDS and held at La MaMa La Galleria, was entitled SIDE X SIDE, and featured work by Lower East Side-affiliated artists Scott Burton, Kate Huh, Nicholas Moufarrege, Martin Wong, and Carrie Yamaoka.
As Daderko writes in his curator’s statement: “The exhibition considers the impact of AIDS on a generation of artists faced with the onset of the epidemic” (Burton, Moufarrege, and Wong all died of AIDS-related causes). Not by coincidence, the art on display prominently featured different modes of inscription: whether literally in text incorporated into pieces by Huh, Moufarrege, and Wong, or more implicitly in Yamaoka’s etched-glass work. While Burton’s video INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR TABLEAUX (1980) doesn’t include text, it’s record of a male figure enacting precise formal movements illustrates the way in which power is able to script itself onto the body, and why for queer activists and feminists alike, the body is a fundamental site of conflict and resistance.
Thus, it made sense that there would be an accompanying reading, and last night Huh, Sara Marcus, and Eileen Myles each presented work to a large group of artists, writers, curators, and activists filling the gallery...
continue reading here
photo of audience at SIDE X SIDE reading by Dean Daderko
Comments