“This Work Is Not For You” Reframing Deviance in Queer and Two-Spirit Portraiture

Tuesday, October 28 |  5:30 – 6:45 PM
Tesla Cariani: “This Work Is Not For You” Reframing Deviance in Queer and Two-Spirit Portraiture
Location: WGS Sitting Room (704 Commonwealth Ave, Rm 102)

This talk traces the visual resonances among Catherine Opie’s infamous photograph Self-Portrait/Pervert, Dayna Danger’s contemporary series Masks, and Ryan Young’s body of work titled Niizh Manidoowag to argue that each of these artists foreground kink aesthetics as a means of speaking back to their respective necropolitical and cultural moments. Drawing on queer theory, affect theory, and Indigenous studies, I discuss how Opie, Danger, and Young utilize photography to grapple with questions of sensation, exposure, relationality, and consent outside of dominant social scripts. Ultimately, this talk demonstrates the value of creative praxis in crafting queered forms of pleasure and kinship in conversation with the structures of violence they seek to resist.