Momentum (Nov. 3-29)

A couple weeks back, I went to a film festival called TrannyFest at Mama Calizo's Voice Factory in the city. Before the movies started, I found a small gallery in the corner for a small show called Momentum.

Four Artists were featured. I didn't particularly care for one, a video piece that showed someone arranging marbles (I really don't understand video art most of the time). But the other three were interesting.

One was Sela Davis, with a piece called "Balance (Before & After)". She used acid-etched steel to create images of herself (crude assumption, I know) before and after her MtF transition. The piece was, aesthetically speaking, very referential of computer programming, hacking, and just-outdated technologies. In my opinion, this transition narrative is an overused one, heavily relied upon by the queer community to express a sense of completion, as though the journey ends after the makeover. Still, it was an interesting medium in which I hadn't seen this story portrayed, so that was good.

A second artist was Rae Strozzo, whose work took up an entire wall. He had two pieces,"What we talk about when we talk about love" and "A month of beds". The first piece consisted of postcard sized pieces of white paper with quick doodles on them, divided in to three sections: "There isn't time now", "Just wait" and "not now." The imagery consisted of hospital scenes, chest binders, catheters, needles, dildos, band-aids. I read it as the story of waiting patiently with a loved one who is in the hospital, perhaps having some sort of sex reassignment surgery. The layout of the drawings was very fluid, and forced the viewer to walk along the wall to view the entire thing. The other piece was smaller and used the same sized papers to create a calendar with sketches of what I presume to be the artist's bed, unmade in different ways over the course of a month. I loved the ideas behind Strozzo's work, but was thrown off by the style of his drawings, which weren't precise enough to be considered "art", but not crude enough to be considered "hip" or "simplistic".

Lastly was the artist Miss Day, who had about five collage pieces in a series called "Tuesday Smilie (Sew Witch)". The collages were small, contained in your average picture frame, and consisted of drawings of sewing machines and scissors, sewing pins puncturing the image and self portraits of a transwoman partially nude and covered in glitter. I enjoyed this section of the show quite a bit, and really took a lot from the images of sewing and transition. I read themes of cutting one's self up, sewing one's self back together, literally or figuratively, for the sake of gender expression. This was such a creative way to display the Transition Narrative that I've gotten so bored of. Also, the collages were interestingly done but completely unpretentious in style.

Overall the show was imperfect, but interesting in topic matter. I like the idea of stumbling across queer art made for queer consumption at a queer event by up and coming queer artists. It feels much more accessible than MoMA's giant prints from renowned artists.