Gender Euphoria: Contemporary Art Beyond the Binary will open July 9, 2020 on Five Oaks Museum’s website and social media and through interactive programming. In order to prioritize everyone’s safety, the exhibition will be entirely non-location based. In this shift of Gender Euphoria to a virtual form, Guest Curator Becca Owen hopes to demonstrate the adaptability and fluidity that characterize many experiences of transness and genderqueerness. Owen states: “The artists, museum team, and myself, the curator, will use digital technologies to share content as well as analog strategies that speak to the history of queer folks connecting across time and space.”

Gender Euphoria features works by gender non-conforming artists who explore feelings of delight, bliss, and elation in genderqueerness. Selected through an open call, the included artists reflect the variety of non-normative gender expressions; the exhibition depicts diverse truths about gender identity in opposition to the reification of a singular, dominant narrative of genderqueerness. The artists featured in Gender Euphoria explore intersecting identities, which are often connected to gender expression. The artworks and programming spark and make space for complex conversations around identity.

This exhibition was conceptualized before the current, urgent protests for Black lives, and Gender Euphoria is not a Black-led project. There is so much vital content coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement, and Owen will continue to use the exhibition’s Instagram platform to share resources and affirm that Black trans lives matter. We remember and seek justice for Tony McDade, Rem’mie Fells, Riah Milton, and Tete Gulley. This exhibition of contemporary art by trans and genderqueer artists shares goals of collective justice and liberation with the Black Lives Matter movement. The creativity and envisioning of liberated futures that are embodied in Gender Euphoria are interconnected with the movement for Black lives and Black liberation.

All contemporary genderqueer art owes a debt to our Black trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming ancestors and contemporaries, including Marsha P. Johnson, Mykki Blanco, Vaginal Davis, Tourmaline, Juliana Huxtable, and many more. You can read Five Oaks Museum’s Black Lives Matter statement and explore anti-racist resources at https://fiveoaksmuseum.org/anti-racist-resources/.

Participating Artists

Zeph Fishlyn – they/them

Pace Taylor – they/them

Rya Hueston (Diné  and Hopi) – she/her

RaiNE Brabender – they/them

Arthur Burns – he/him

Ebenezer Galluzzo – he/him

Lo Moran – they/them

Liberty Morey – they/them and he/him

Hailey Tayathy (Quileute) – they/them or anything said respectfully

Ingemar Hagen-Keith – s(he)

Forest Svendgard-Lang – they/them and he/him

Ursa Nuffer-Rodriguez – they/them and elle

Programs and Projects

July 8th, 5 pm: Member preview of exhibition

July 9, 12 pm: Exhibition opens on museum website

Zeph Fishlyn’s Sum of its Parts and Lo Moran’s Conversion Therapy: Queering the World social practice projects begin inviting participation

July 9, 7 pm: Drag performance by Hailey Tayathy with live streamed Q & A session

July 10th, 11am: Live streamed brunch conversation and Q & A with Five Oaks Museum Co-Director, Molly Alloy, and Gender Euphoria Guest Curator, Becca Owen

July 11th, 1 pm: Live streamed zine making workshop with Liberty Morey

August 8, 10:30 am: Live streamed Conversion Therapy: Queering the World workshop with Lo Moran

This announcement was originally shared by Five Oaks Museum

Featured image by Pace Taylor