Patricide
August 19, 2019 – September 14, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 29th, 7pm – 9pm
Panel Discussion led by Courtney Webster and Meg Turner: Sunday, September 8th, 1pm – 3 pm
Courtney Webster and Meg Turner’s collaborative project Patricide interrogates western culture’s historic portrayal of the heroic body as being almost exclusively a white male body. Webster and Turner create an alternate lexicon by casting a queer person of color (Webster) as a heroic or swoon-worthy protagonist. In Patricide, bodies that are often erased or invisible in American culture are seen, empowered, and celebrated. Webster and Turner’s images lay bare dominant cultural narratives and the role those narratives play in determining which people society deems entitled to dignity, power, and desirability. By exposing the contrived nature of traditional depictions of heroic bodies, Patricide aims to illuminate and dispel subconscious justifications for colonialism, white supremacy, violently enforced heteronormativity, patriarchy, and misogyny.
Meg Turner is a multi-disciplinary visual artist living and working between New York City and New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work focuses on photography, sign making, and installation. Meg’s work has been exhibited at various New York institutions including Times Square Space, The Wallach Gallery, Lenfest Center for the Arts, False Flag Gallery, and the HERE arts center. She has also shown at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, LA), The Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans, LA), and Good Children Gallery (New Orleans, LA) and The Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Norwalk, CT), Green Lantern Gallery (Chicago IL), and The Museum of The Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI). Meg received her MFA from Columbia University in 2018 and her BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2008.
Courtney Webster is an intersectional visual artist based in New York City. Webster’s artistic practice often incorporates video and photography. She has worked as a Producer/ Director with many artists and institutions, notably The Moschukma Institute in New Orleans, Advice Project Media, and the filmmaker Zbigniew Bzymek. Webster is deeply passionate about making media accessible for non-binary people, women, young people, people of color, and other marginalized groups that have traditionally been shut out of their own storytelling or denied the use of the tools and resources required to create and disseminate media. Patricide is Webster and Turner’s ongoing collaborative project. Photographs from this series have been shown in New York City at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, The Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, BRIC, and The Wallach Gallery.
Curated by Seth Schwaiger