International Art Fair: QUEER Biennial II, Yooth: Loss and Found
Dates: June 4–June 26, 2016
Reception: June 4, Saturday, June 4, 6 to 11PM—Industry Gallery, 801 E. 7th Street, # 103, Los Angeles, exhibition/performance/film, through June 26th, (Thurs-Saturday 1-5 and by appointment)

Other Venues and Dates:
Ace Hotel, 929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, Lectures and Dialogues, June 5, 19, 26th. Performance and Film Projections, June 18.  
WeHo Pride parade, SM/La Cienega, “Queer Signs of the Times” rally, June 12th, 11am.
Tom of Finland Foundation, 1421 Lavetta Terrace, Los Angeles. Films, 6 to 11, June 26th.
LACA, 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los Angeles. Performances, June 16, and 17th.
Simone Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone & Hahn Rowe - Supernatural
PAM Residencies, 5810 ½ North Figueroa St., Los Angeles. Artist Residencies June 4, to 26th
Pieter, 420 West Avenue 33, Los Angeles. Performances: June 9 and 10th.
François Chaignaud – Dumy Moyi
Workshop: June 18, and 19th including performance. Fauxnique

Contact: Ruben Esparza, ruben@rubenesparza.com or 323-333-5449
Complete schedule: http://www.queerbiennial.com.

QUEER Biennial Collective is pleased to announce the second installment of our international arts and performance event: “QUEER Biennial II, Yooth: Loss and Found.” Our program will look closely at how the AIDS epidemic influenced artists that came of age during the 1980-90s and will explore potential bridges or connections to how a new generation of artists reflect on or deflect from this lineage within QUEER history.

QUEER Biennial is an international survey focusing on current moments in OUT/QUEER/LGBTQ art and culture and will showcase emerging, mid-career, and established artists. Featured work includes installation, film, live performance, and historical documentation.

Thirty years is a long stretch—almost long enough to settle into a comfortable amnesia, with the passing of time serving as a medicament for a painful period that profoundly changed a QUEER generation. A period marked with angst, confusion and death—a QUEER generation traumatized—from back-of-the-page news reports of a virus affecting men in Los Angeles in the early eighties to reports of a “gay cancer” in major cities across the US through the nineties. These dark days sent chilling reminders across the country and the world of our mortality and how fear can create divisiveness as well as hatred pointed to an already marginalized people. It also prompted a call to arms and united a disparate QUEER community that was shaken from a warm glow of sexual freedoms and advances in gay rights in the mid-to late seventies. For many of us tha came-of-age during this time, looking back is a return to a psychological battleground of our youth.

QUEER artists at work during that tumultuous period grappled with this deathly zeitgeist and perhaps cast a dark shadow on a younger generation of queer artists. Some of today’s QUEER artists reflect on that arc of QUEER history while others point in other directions that include socio-political issues, gender identity, conceptualism, history/herstory, candy-coated escapism, and of course loves/sex/death. In “QUEER Biennial II,” we will compare and contrast these points of departure but also revel in the celebration of youth through what this multi-generational queer assembly collectively has to say.

“Queer Biennial II: Loss and Found” is presented by Ruben Esparza as lead curator with an extended group of installation, performance, film curators, publishers and documentarians that includes: Mark Cramer, Jon Vaz Gar, Brian Getnick, Jeremy Lucido, Tanya Rubbak, Marc Streit, Stuart Sandford, and Amy Von Harrington.

List of artists/performers/filmmakers: Simone Aughterlony, Love Bailey, Lukas Beyeler, Joe Bruns, Paul Buijs, Jibz Cameron, Enrique Castrejon, François Chaignaud, Antonio Da Silva, Ed. de la Torre, Oleg Dou, Eric Eich, Monique Jenkinson a.k.a. FAUXNIQUE, Jaye Fishel, Greg Firlotte, Gage of the Boone, Alex Guerra, Daniel Hellmann, HomoRiot, Chasen Igleheart, Jordan, Jmy Kidd, Jamison Karon, Naruki Kukita, Bruce La Bruce, Alex La Cruz, Liss La Fleur, Matt Lambert, Elisha Lim, Antonija Melanie Magenta, Brooke Mason, Martin Matamoros, Ivan Monteiro, Nik O Nik, Mikki Olson, Tara Jane O’ Neil, Pansy Ass Ceramics, Gio Black Peter, Valérie Reding, Miguel Angel Reyes, Jamie Ross, Hahn Rowe, Rafael Santiago, Savage Family, Phil Tarley, Joey Terrill, Liz Toonkel, Mica Sigourney a.k.a. Vivvy Anne Forever More, Daphne Von Rey, Savage Family, Jan Wandrag, Suzanne Wright, and DJ Sad Boy. More to be announced.

Ross Bleckner "Dick" 80's 90's 00's photographs.

Recalling: Tom of Finland, Claude Cahun, Patrick Cowley, Sylvester and Felix Gonzalez-Torres More to be announced.

Lectures and Dialogues
How did the apex of the AIDS crisis in Los Angeles shape the history and ontology of performance art? On June 5th, 18th, 19th and 26th, Native Strategies will facilitate public dialogues between artists, writers, activists, and scholars to reflect on the impact of AIDS on their individual practices and their and sense of belonging or division from a particular LGBTQ lineage and community. Our free public program, hosted at the ACE hotel downtown, will be a series of conversations, performances and presentations between critical thinkers whose perspectives and work will shape the forthcoming issue, LGBTQP(erformace) designed by Native Strategies co-director Tanya Rubbak. This series is curated by Brian Getnick and Marc Streit with support from Ruben Esparza, Mark Cramer, Mary Ellyn Johnson and swissnex San Francisco.

Native Strategies LA, co directed by Brian Getnick and Tanya Rubbak, is a published inventory of interviews with practitioners and essays by critical thinkers around performance art made in Los Angeles between 2011 and 2016. nativestrategiesla.com

List of speakers: Marcel Alcala, Ron Athey, Simone Aughterlony, Nao Bustamante, Mark Cramer, Travis Reed Davidson, Dino Dinco, Jennifer Doyle, Eric Eich, Ruben Esparza, Rafa Esparza, Brian Getnick, Raquel Gutierrez, Jack Halberstam, Daniel Hellman, Keith Hennesy, Sebastian Hernandez, Brandon Drew Holmes,Jamillah James, Alexander Juhasz, Liss Lafleur, Issac Ledesma, Philip Littell, Obidio Martinez, Marcus Kuiland Nazario, Pig Pen, Dont Rhine, Sheree Rose, Andy Sacher, Stuart Sandford, Nathan Schocher, Mica Sigourney, Marc Streit, Julie Tolentino, Amy Von Harrington, and Laura Watts.