Chris E. Vargas

Last updated

Chris E. Vargas
Education University of California Santa Cruz and University of California, Berkeley
AwardsCreative Capital Grant [1]
Website www.chrisevargas.com

Chris E. Vargas is an artist and video maker whose work explores the ways that queer and trans people negotiate institutions and popular culture. [2] Vargas is the founder of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (MOTHA), a project that blurs artist and curatorial practice. MOTHA has no permanent space, instead it has been presented at venues such as the Henry Art Gallery, Cooper Union, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Hammer Museum. Vargas videos have screened at SFMOMA, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MIX NYC, Palais de Tokyo, Outfest, amongst other venues. Vargas completed a BA at University of California Santa Cruz and MFA at University of California, Berkeley.

Contents

Work

Vargas video work explores queer and trans culture. He and Greg Youmans collaborated on the nine episode webseries "Falling in Love... with Chris and Greg" that explores a relationship between a cisgendered gay man (Greg) and his trans boyfriend (Chris). [3] [4] The sitcom-style videos cover the challenges and rewards of the life of this couple. [5]

Vargas was among those who created a miniature replica of Christopher Park and placed monuments to narrate the events of the Stonewall Riots that followed the police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar in 1969 New York. [6] Christopher Park became a site of riots since it was close to the Stonewall Inn bar that got raided and Vargas states the recreation of that park includes monuments that memorialize the modern LGBTQ rights movement. [7]

Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art

The Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (abbreviated as MOTHA), is a museum founded by Vargas in 2013 dedicated to the preservation and representation of transgender and gender non-conforming history and art. [8] Vargas remains the Executive Director. The museum does not have a building of its own, or fixed location; MOTHA functions as a floating museum, hosting exhibitions in art galleries, museums, and public spaces across the United States. [8] Greg Youmans, in Elsa Gidlow's garden describes the museum as blurring the line between artistic and curatorial practice. [9]

The Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (abbreviated as MOTHA), based in San Francisco, is a museum founded in 2013 dedicated to the preservation and representation of transgender and gender non-conforming history and art. The museum does not yet have a building of its own. Greg Youmans, in Elsa Gidlow's garden describes the museum as blurring the line between artistic and curatorial practice. [9]

Without a consistent stationary space for his art exhibition, Vargas points out that there is not as much of a need to define borders and boundaries for trends and trans identification. He notes, "Without a physical space, and by doing it as occasional iterations, exhibitions, events, or performances, I get to be a little looser.” [10]

History

The museum was created in 2013 by founder and Executive Director Chris E. Vargas. Vargas is a San Francisco-based artist and performer. [2] MOTHA functions as a floating museum, hosting exhibitions in art galleries, museums, and public spaces across the United States. [8]

Exhibitions

Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects is a project that takes inspiration from Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects. [11] It and focuses on trans experiences in the Pacific north-west and juxtaposes archival materials and contemporary art. [12]

Further reading

Vargas, Chris E; Frantz, David Evans; Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art; ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives (January 1, 2015). Transgender hirstory in 99 objects: legends and mythologies. OCLC   953018919.

Resident artist program

The museum has an amorphous residency program that offers no physical structure and makes no demands of the resident artist. [15] Tuesday Smillie was the inaugural resident artist. [16]

Exhibitions

Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects is a project that takes inspiration from Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects. [11] It focuses on trans experiences in the Pacific north-west and juxtaposes archival materials and contemporary art. [12]

Resident artist program

The museum has an amorphous residency program that offers no physical structure and makes no demands of the resident artist. [15] Tuesday Smillie was the inaugural resident artist. [16]

Residencies and awards

Vargas received a 2016 Creative Capital Grant in Emerging Fields, was a Community Engagement Artist in Residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and received a Fire Island Artist Residency. [17] [18] [19] Vargas' videos have won prizes at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. [20]

Related Research Articles

Stonewall (charity) UK-based charity and advocacy group for LGBT rights

Stonewall is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights charity in the United Kingdom, named after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City's Greenwich Village. It is the largest LGBT rights organisation in Europe and was formed in 1989 by political activists and others lobbying against section 28 of the Local Government Act. Its founders include Sir Ian McKellen, Lisa Power MBE and Lord Cashman CBE.

Marsha P. Johnson Black American gay liberation activist (1945–1992)

Marsha P. Johnson, born and also known as Malcolm Michaels Jr., was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Johnson was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), alongside close friend Sylvia Rivera. Johnson was also a popular figure in New York City's gay and art scene, modeling for Andy Warhol, and performing onstage with the drag performance troupe Hot Peaches. Johnson was known as the "mayor of Christopher Street" due to being a welcoming presence in the streets of Greenwich Village. From 1987 through 1992, Johnson was an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

Sylvia Rivera 20th-century American gay liberation and transgender rights activist

Sylvia Rivera was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art Art museum in New York City, New York

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (LLM), formerly the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, is a visual art museum in SoHo, Lower Manhattan, New York City. It mainly collects, preserves and exhibits visual arts created by LGBTQ artists or art about LGBTQ+ themes, issues, and people. The Museum, operated by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, offers exhibitions year-round in numerous locations and owns more than 22,000 objects, including, paintings, drawings, photography, prints and sculpture. It has been recognized as one of the oldest arts groups engaged in the collection and preservation of gay art. The Foundation was awarded Museum status by the New York State Board of Regents in 2011 and was formally accredited as a museum in 2016. The Museum is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and operates pursuant to their guidelines. As of 2019, the LLM was the only museum in the world dedicated to artwork documenting the LGBTQ experience.

Stonewall National Museum and Archives (SNMA) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization that promotes understanding through preserving and sharing the culture of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their role in society. SNMA is dedicated solely to LGBT history, civil rights, art and culture. The museum features three gallery spaces with changing monthly and bi-monthly exhibits, and includes a permanent timeline of American LGBT history.

Chitra Ganesh

Chitra Ganesh is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ganesh's work across media includes: charcoal drawings, digital collages, films, web projects, photographs, and wall murals. Ganesh draws from mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.

Lou Sullivan American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men

Louis Graydon Sullivan was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts.

The Transgender Oral History Project is an initiative by and for the transgender community. TOHP collects interviews and produces multimedia content featuring a stories of transgender-identified people, and exists to empower trans folks through sharing stories of their lives. The Transgender Oral History Project is also active in the community, hosting events in many states including Massachusetts, Illinois, Iowa, Seattle, Philadelphia, and New York City.

Cyrus Grace Dunham is an American writer, actor, and activist. Dunham's debut book, A Year Without A Name: A Memoir, was published by Little, Brown and Company in 2019.

Cassils is a performance artist, body builder and personal trainer from Montreal, Quebec, Canada now based in Los Angeles, California, United States. Their work uses the body in a sculptural fashion, integrating feminism, body art, and gay male aesthetics. Cassils is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Grant, a United States Artists Fellowship, a California Community Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship (2012), several Canada Council for the Arts grants, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. Cassils is gender non-conforming and transmasculine, and goes by singular they pronouns.

Gay Liberation Monument Monument in New York City, U.S.

The Gay Liberation Monument is a monument featuring the sculpture Gay Liberation by American artist George Segal, located in Christopher Park along Christopher Street in the West Village section of Manhattan, New York. The monument was completed in 1980 and was notably the first piece of public art dedicated to LGBTQIA+ rights and displaying solidarity for LGBTQIA+ individuals, while simultaneously commemorating the ongoing struggles of the community. Located at the northern end of the park, the art installation commemorates the Stonewall riots; the monument was dedicated on June 23, 1992, and is part of the Stonewall National Monument. The sculpture itself features two pairs of life-like, life-size individuals made of bronze and painted white; the monument depicts a standing couple and a seated couple.

LGBT culture in New York City Culture of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in New York City, United States

New York City has one of the largest LGBTQ populations in the world and the most prominent. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre". LGBT Americans in New York City constitute by significant margins the largest self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in the United States, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village are widely considered to be the genesis of the modern gay rights movement.

Mark Aguhar

Mark Cagaanan Aguhar was an American activist, writer and multimedia fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and transgender femme-identified. Aguhar was made famous by her Tumblr blog that questioned the mainstream representation of the "glossy glorification of the gay white male body".

Tourmaline (activist)

Tourmaline is an activist, filmmaker and writer based in New York City, currently the 2016–2018 Activist-in-Residence at Barnard Center for Research on Women. She is a transgender woman who identifies as queer. Tourmaline is most notable for her work in transgender activism and economic justice, through her work with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Critical Resistance and Queers for Economic Justice. In 2017, she edited the book Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, with co-editors Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. The book is part of a series called Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture by MIT Press.

Morehshin Allahyari Iranian-American new media artist and activist

Morehshin Allahyari is an Iranian-born American media artist, activist, and writer, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relationship between technology and art activism. Allahyari’s artworks include 3D-printed objects, video, experimental animation, web art, and publications. She is most noted for her projects Material Speculation: ISIS (2016), which is a series of 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS (2015–2016), and The 3D Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook (2015–2016). As a 2017 Research Resident at Eyebeam, Allahyari also worked on a project about Digital Colonialism; a term she has coined since 2015.

Marita Dingus is an African-American artist who works in multimedia, using found objects.

Ajamu X is a British artist, curator, archivist and activist. He is best known for his fine art photography which explores same-sex desire, and the Black male body, and his work as an archivist and activist to document the lives and experiences of black LGBTQ people in the UK.

Tuesday Smillie is an American interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on trans-feminist politics and the aesthetics of protest. Smillie has been recognized for her reinterpretation of protest banners through traditional craft materials. Writer Johanna Fateman describes work like Smillie's Street Transvestites 1973 (2015) as "ornate, meticulously sewn and painted trans-liberation banners" that "could not get their radical point across more lovingly."

<i>Gay Liberation Monument</i>

The Gay Liberation' Monument is a monument featuring the sculpture 'Gay Liberation' by American artist George Segal, located in Christopher Park along Christopher Street in the West Village section of Manhattan, New York. The monument was completed in 1980 and was notably the first piece of public art dedicated to LGBTQIA+ rights and displaying solidarity for LGBTQIA+ individuals, while simultaneously commemorating the ongoing struggles of the community. Located at the northern end of the park, the installation commemorates the Stonewall Riots; the monument was dedicated on June 23, 1992, and is part of the Stonewall National Monument.The sculpture itself features two pairs of life-like, life-size individuals made of bronze and painted white; the monument depicts a standing couple and a seated couple.

References

  1. ↑ "Creative Capital – Investing in Artists who Shape the Future". creative-capital.org.
  2. 1 2 Carlson, Michele. "Inside the Artist's Studio, Part 4: Chris E. Vargas" . Retrieved March 4, 2017.
  3. ↑ "Falling in Love ...with Chris and Greg : Greg Youmans". gregyoumans.com. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  4. ↑ RADAR (May 2, 2012). "Chris and Greg are a SPECTACLE!". RADAR Productions. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  5. ↑ "The Bay Area Reporter Online | Transgressions & an activist stance". Bay Area Reporter. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  6. ↑ Wright, Talia (2018). "Monuments to a Riot". In These Times. 42– via ProQuest.
  7. ↑ Hernández, Sarita (2019). "Resisting the Museum: Archiving Trans* Presence and Queer Futures with Chris E. Vargas". American Quarterly. 71 (2): 371–378. doi:10.1353/aq.2019.0031. ISSN   1080-6490.
  8. 1 2 3 "June 21st, 6-9pm: Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony & Inaugural Celebration". Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art. Retrieved March 4, 2017.
  9. 1 2 Stone, Amy L.; Cantrell, Jaime (November 20, 2015). Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: Researching Sexual Histories. SUNY Press. ISBN   9781438459035.
  10. ↑ Meiners, Erica R.; Quinn, Therese (2019). "Introduction: Defiant Memory Work". American Quarterly. 71 (2): 353–361. doi:10.1353/aq.2019.0029. ISSN   1080-6490.
  11. 1 2 Kurin, Richard (January 1, 2016). Smithsonian's history of america in 101 objects. Place of publication not identified: Penguin Books. ISBN   978-0143128151. OCLC   936619726.
  12. 1 2 Heinlein, Sabine (November 18, 2016). "The transgender body in art: finding visibility 'in difficult times like these'". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved March 9, 2017.
  13. 1 2 "MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas present: Transhirstory in 99 Objects at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, WA on Wed-Sun. Through June 4 – Seattle Art Events Calendar – The Stranger". The Stranger. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  14. 1 2 "MOTHA Faces the Challenges of Building a Trans Museum". The Stranger. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
  15. 1 2 "Announcing MOTHA Resident Artist TUESDAY SMILLIE". Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
  16. 1 2 Palmer, Lauren (November 20, 2015). "15 Revolutionary and Influential Transgender Artists Who Refuse to Be Invisible". artnet news. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Creative Capital – Investing in Artists who Shape the Future". creative-capital.org.
  18. ↑ Patricia. "2016 YBCA Artist Residency | Art Practical". Art Practical. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  19. ↑ "People". Fire Island Artist Residency. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  20. ↑ "51ST AAFF AWARDS ANNOUNCEMENT". Ann Arbor Film Festival. Archived from the original on October 12, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2017.

Further reading

Vargas, Chris E; Frantz, David Evans; Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art; ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives (January 1, 2015). Transgender hirstory in 99 objects: legends and mythologies. OCLC   953018919.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.