Moore's (re)Focus Now

Moore College Galleries

through March 16, 2024

more info: https://moore.edu/events/re-focus-then-and-now/2024-01-27/

Murmurations

26th National Queer Arts Festival
June 9 - 30

Somarts
934 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA 94103

We coalesce as a pulsating, swooping, living, collective of queer ecologies, bodies in nature. We are simultaneously agile & monumental, individual & communal. Our collective power represents a direct threat to systems of oppression.

curated by Xtal Azul and Gaia W.XYZ
production support from Anne Wu
installation support from Chichi Del Castillo
photos by Jesus Rodriguez

Hot Bits 2023

 

Photos by Ty Burdenski

ABOUT

Hot Bits is a queer porn film festival curated and organized by a majority QTIBIPoC (queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) all volunteer collective who design sex-positive experiences centering QTIBIPoC self determined desire, joy, and pleasure. We operate under a DIT (do-it-together) ethos of care for ourselves, each other, and community. We seek to highlight underrepresented bodies as a means to celebrate anti-oppressive queer/trans porn tailored towards experiences, acts and stories often deemed marginal by mainstream society. At the festival's fullest it’s rounded out by workshops, live performances, visual art exhibitions, QnA’s, a match making cupid, elder honoring, trauma informed chill space with support folx, sex positive vendors local to the festival's location and afterparties for connecting on the dance floor, dungeon, and LGBTQI strip club! Follow us here.

Imaging Public Sex Utopias @ Haverford College

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This praxis course examines the tension between art and that which is considered obscene: porn, public shamelessness, and deviant queer sexualities such as kink and sex work. By delegating the two as separate (often opposing) camps, we run the risk of further marginalization of a key component of a thriving humanity, sexual wellness. In an age of grindr, incels, shadowbanning, mass incarceration, and pandemia, we will investigate the role artists, activists, or accomplices play in documenting, destigmatizing, and expressing collective possibilities. We will develop projects that explore the powerful potential of the utopian imagination, intimacy, and somatic embodiment as tools of critical inquiry and discursive protest. The latter will be researched using techniques of GIF animation, self portraiture, and performance art. We will also read texts and view films that contextualize the politics of sexual freedom while considering the elusive yet paramount impact of art on culture. Students will complete creative visual art assignments, keep a journal of their own lived experiences of bodily autonomy, craft research-based projects, and present a final exhibition of their work. 

Spring 2023 FINAL EXHIBITION

Not Safe for Socials: Imaging Sex Utopias and De-Censoring Obscenity
Opening Friday April 28 4:30-6:30pm
April 28 - May 12, 2023
VCAM Upper Create Space
Haverford College

Exhibition statement: Nobody talks about it, but everyone dreams of it: sexual liberation, expression, pleasure, and most importantly, existence. Navigating the ever-changing landscapes of human sexuality, we yearn to express, manifest, and fulfill our most ambitious constructions of a world where the human desire to connect lies unpoliced and free. Not Safe for Socials: Imaging Sex Utopias and De-Censoring Obscenity creates our own sex utopias with luscious imaginings of futuristic robots, personal documentation of daily details and queer fabulations of a fantastic past, present, and future.

We attempt to connect with the past, present, and future. We are not afraid to reuse and repurpose. We use sounds and images that we create and collect. We interact with technology that seems so distant from our physical selves.

The modern world as we know it has confined human sexuality into a limited space. We envision where this changes—not quietly, but loudly. This exhibit explores the beauty of sex, queerness, bodies of all sizes, transformation, pleasure, euphoria, and p[o]rn. Let’s turn the campus into a public sex utopia.”

Photos by Patrick Montero

The Body You Want

 

photos by Constance Mensh

April 14 - August 5, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, April 14, 6-8PM EST 

Asian Arts Initiative  |  1219 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19107

The Body You Want sheds light on how queer identity is shaped by and functions with the existence of sexual and gender diversity. Featuring six Asian and Asian American queer artists including Jaewon Kim, Jongbum Kim, Jason Vu, Eva Wu, Shawna Wu, and Yidan Zeng, The Body You Want explores the variable positions of Asian queer bodies through the lens of geopolitical gender norms. The exhibition investigates the ways in which each artist responds to specific cultural values in developing their own queer identity, while capturing shared experiences in the Asian Diaspora. 

This exhibition will open along with The Erotic Project. Opening reception: April 14th, 2023, 6-8pm. Register here. 

Join us at the Opening Reception of The Body You Want, AAI's Spring Season exhibition that explores the variable positions of Asian queer bodies through the lens of geopolitical gender norms, featuring six Asian and Asian American artists: Jaewon Kim, Jongbum Kim, Jason Vu, Eva Wu, Shwana Wu, and Yidan Zeng. 

The Body You Want is curated by Joyce Chung with curatorial assistance by Dominique Chua. 

PRESS

“My work as an artist and as an intellectual is about porn and art; where can they overlap, and how can we push the boundaries of art to be more accepting of porn?” said Wu. “Because at the PMA [Philadelphia Museum of Art], you see full nudes by dead men artists, but on Instagram, I can’t post a naked photo or I’ll be deleted.”

Ishii is pushing the boundaries of art and explicit sexual content by bringing Wu into her institution.

“One of the elephants in the room is that: You really don’t understand how provocative something is until your body reacts to it,” Ishii said. “For me at least, that is a good barometer of the caliber of a work: does your body react? I can’t think of a form of art that elicits a direct bodily reaction like erotica.”

“One of the most subversive parts of this already dynamic exhibits was the pornographic video installations in a separate exhibition room behind the Asian Arts Initiative’s theater room. Curated by and starring Eva Wu, who is also one of the organizers of the Hot Bits queer porn festival and using the moniker Evie Snax for their performances, the looping un-simulated films feature a variety of queer and trans BIPOC adult film performers engaging in different types of sexual play. These films stand out in the world of fabricated, very cisheteronormative big-budget studio pornographic films made with a dopamine-eating white lens and kink practices performed in a way that creates false expectations. Instead, they are sexy, appreciative of marginalized sexual intimacy without staged fetishism for the viewer, expertly visually composed, and show everything and all without needing to cover the most vulnerable of natural human expressions from what a judgmental eye may deem as “too vulgar” as commonly imposed.”

In Baby (2018), an eight-minute film in which a performer engages in something alluding to solo strip tease, Wu depicts the queer/lesbian romance in a playful yet sensuous manner, rather than the hyper-erotic, sexualized way often imposed by society.  

FORBIDDEN CITY (A Peep Show Retrospective)

September 8-30, 2022

Philadelphia, PA - PRACTICE Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Eva Wo. FORBIDDEN CITY (A Peep Show Retrospective)” features several bodies of work including installation, digital collage, lenticular, self-portraiture and performance art. The exhibition will also debut a live, interactive “peep show” booth, a NSFW playing card deck to take home, as well as a conjoining retrospective of over twenty short films, produced between 2015 and 2022.

The focal point of Wo’s multidisciplinary practice is to both imagine and call-in a vivid utopian future of uncensored gender and sexual self-determination for all. To achieve this, the bold and colorful works that comprise FORBIDDEN CITY embrace the tension between the joyous and the obscene by way of sweaty play within the boundlessness of queer freak sexuality. In joyous celebration, Wo realizes a truly free, pro-sex work and pro-porn universe.

At the beating heart of FORBIDDEN CITY is its interactive peep show. Inspired by the pulsating neon street signs of 70s Times Square, Wo’s free-standing, interactive INFINITE PEEP show booth is adorned with an elaborate and glitzy scalloped edge, flashing light bulbs and an opening universe right before your eyes. Activate for the price of one creep coin, a free sample of which to first 100 visitors. Once the viewer inserts a pleasure coin and peers through the peep hole, a world of flowers, mirrors, lights and live performance art opens up before their eyes. 

Wo’s film retrospective offers the viewer an opportunity to experience unadulterated queer/trans creativity and sexuality on screen. Throughout their rich archive of sci-fi feverdreams, playfully erotic photoshoots and lesbionic strip teases, Wo creates other worlds to abandon the otherwise transphobic and cisnormative status quo in porn. 

Wo’s dynamic pin-up playing card deck, Sun Bunny NSFW Playing Cards (2022), also joins these themes in a whimsical, hand-held medium. Whereas traditional pin-up cards depict women in risqué poses by male artists, Wo’s cards recenter the sexual autonomy of the figure in the frame. Erotic, colorful and audacious, each card collages an original photo of the artist by Shoog McDaniel, resulting in a lush and seductive deck unlike any other. 

For more information, visit practicegallery.org

Visitor Information

PRACTICE Gallery
319 N 11th St, 2nd Floor, Unit 2G
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Exhibition will be open from Sept. 8 - Sept. 30 2022 with opening receptions* on Thursday Sept 8, Friday Sept 9, and Friday Sept 30 from 6-10 p.m. Admission is free. Masks provided and required. Suitable only for ages 18 & up. 

Opening receptions include durational live performances by West Vargina, Eppchez, Mia Secreto and other special guests. Special after hours short film screening upstairs at Vox Populi’s black box theater beginning at 10pm immediately after September 9 reception. ~60 minutes.

The Gallery is open to the public on First Fridays and on weekends from 2-6 p.m. If you would like to drop by some other time please e-mail info@practicegallery.org for an appointment.

Accessibility Statement: There are five steps leading from the street-level to the first-floor landing where the passenger elevator picks-up/drops-off. The entry into/out of the elevator is 29-inches wide, so may not accommodate all wheelchairs or motorized chairs. Please get in touch if you need a ramp or have other questions.

PRESS: Timaree Schmitt, “Forbidden City,” Philadelphia Weekly, September 5 2022

Photos by Rich Hogan

SELECTED SCREENINGS


Archiving this list of selected screenings because I fell behind and fell behind keeping up with it. Still am interested in screening work though so programmers please do reach out for screener links!


Artist Panel at Outsider Fest’s Conference on the Couch: Intervening (In) Media, 2020, Austin TX. On the right is collaborator Heart Byrne.

2024 Courts/Queer Mais Trash International Film Festival, Brussels Belgium (Cypress Knee Porno)
2023 Porn Film Festival Berlin, Berlin Germany (BunnyXGator, Cypress Knee Porno)
           Fish&Chips Film Festival, Cagliari Italy (BunnyXGator)
           queerfilm Festival Bremen, Bremen Germany (Kitchen Talk)
           Red Umbrella Festival, Dublin Ireland (BunnyXGator)
           Blonde Cobra Festival for Queer & Experimental Cinema, Cologne Germany
           Luststreifen Film Festival Basel, Basel Switzerland (BunnyXGator)
           San Fransisco Porn Film Festival, San Fransisco CA (BunnyXGator)
           Hot Bits Film Festival, Philadelphia Pennsylvania and Baltimore Maryland
           Bedded by AORTA FILMS, online
2021 Ce l'ho Corto Film Festival, Bologna Italy
           Queer Film Festival Oldenburg, Oldenburg Germany
           Queer Women of Color Film Festival, San Fransisco CA
           Every Cinema, Helsinki Finland
           Schamlos! Queerfeminist Pornfestival, Frauenraum, Bern Switzerland 
2020 Tom of Finland in the Queer Imagination, Philly Fringe Festival, Philadelphia PA
           Bearded Ladies Cabaret FEAST, Philly Fringe Festival, Philadelphia PA
           Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Prague Czech Republic
           Filmmaker in Focus: Insatiable Pictures, PinkLabel.tv, Berlin Germany
           OUTsider Fest, The Vortex, Austin TX  
           Not Your Rescue Project: Films from the Sex Workers Right Movement, HIV2020, online            DOTYK Festival, Minsk Belarus
           Hacker Film Fest, Trenta Formiche, Rome Italy
           Sex Down South, Atlanta GA
           Massimadi Festival, Brussels Belgium
           San Francisco PFF, San Fransisco CA
           Scum Trust, Sex Down South, online
           PFF Vienna, online
         Athens PFF, online
2019  (W)HOLE Premiere, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn NY
           OUTsider Fest, The Vortex, Austin TX
           Hacker Film Festival, Trenta Formiche, Rome Italy
           Cinema Queer International Film Festival, Bronx Nya Bastu, Stockholm Sweden
           Toronto Queer Film Festival, OCAD, Toronto Canada
           MIX Copenhagen, Cinemateket, Copenhagen Denmark
           Rabarbar Festival, Spółdzielnia Ogniwo, Kraków Poland
           Le Fesses-tival, Genève Switzerland
           Heelz on Reelzzz, Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, New York, NY
           Jerk Off Shack, the Bermuda Triangle, Brooklyn NYC
           The F Word, Alphaville, Brooklyn NYC
           Filt*hy, Vrankrijk, Amsterdam Netherlands
           My Valentine, Beursschouwburg, Brussels Belgium
           Trans*Screening, X Space, Vienna Austria
           Sex Worker Film and Arts Fest, the Roxie, San Fransisco CA
           Pr0n 4 Freakz, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle WA
           London Porn Film Festival, the Horse Hospital, London UK
           Treppe 41, Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt Germany
           HUSH, Hypnos Cinema, Malmö Sweden
           Pron Yourself, La Mutinerie, Paris France
2018  Riots and Popcorn Film Festival, Syndikalistiskt Forum, Gothenburg Sweden
           SIP: Appetite, La Déferle, Montreal Quebec
           Transformations Film Festival, Werkstatt Der Kulturen, Berlin Germany
           Toronto Queer Film Festival, OCAD University, Toronto Canada
           Fireworks: Experimental Screen/Dance Film Festival, Albina Green, Portland OR
           Fusion Film Festival, Norwegian Film Institute's Cinemateque, Oslo Norway
           #38HOTTT, the Rotunda, Philadelphia PA
           Batty Mama #5 ConSensual: Feel don't Touch, The Yard, London UK
           Du Placard a la Backroom, le 102, Grenoble France
           Queerowy Maj, Cooperative Ogniwo, Cracow Poland
           East Bay Express BRIEFS Short Film Competition, Grand Lake Theater, Oakland CA
           Porn Yourself Festival,  La Mutinerie, Paris, France
           Strangelove: A Queer Festival, Het Bos, Anterp Belgium
           Berlin PFF 2018, Kino Movimiento, Berlin Germany
           Porny Days, Cinema Riffraff, Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich Switzerland
           London PFF, The Horse Hospital, London UK
           Attack on (your) Patriarchy, Radikal Light, Berlin Germany
           Lovesome, Occupied Former Australian Embassy, Berlin Germany
2017  Mix Copenhagen, Cinemateket, Copenhagen Denmark
           Berlin PFF 2017, Movimiento, Berlin Germany
           Porny Days, Riffraff, Zürich Switzerland
           Bodies on Display, Mammal Gallery, Atlanta GA
           Tempt Fest, Navel Space, Los Angeles CA
           Femmosphere, Schwules Museum, Berlin Germany
           San Fransisco Bay Area Sex Worker Film and Art Festival, Kaleidoscopic Games, the Roxie Theatre, San Fransisco CA
           Tanzhafen Festival, Moviemento Programmkino, Linz Austria
           Toronto International PFF, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, Toronto Canada
           Hot Bits: Mini XXX Film Festival, 40th Street AIR Gallery, Philadelphia PA
           Berlin Series, Altes Finanzamt, Berlin Germany
2016  A is for Aliens Film Release, The Daze Collective, Philadelphia PA

Liberation Tarot

 

ORDER HERE ↗

Magic is an essential tool for healing and social change within our communities. Liberation Tarot is a collection of 79 tarot cards and accompanying guidebook, created over the course of four years by more than thirty artists and writers living in the US, Canada, France, Brazil, Palestine, and Mexico. The booklet includes an introduction from deck organizer Elicia Epstein, insightful essays by adrienne maree brown and lawrence barriner II, and beautifully crafted card descriptions from poet emet ezell.

Following in the lineage of projects like Slow Holler, The Collective Tarot, and Next World Tarot, Liberation Tarot seeks to serve as a tool for those inspired towards revolution in the face of the able-centered, capitalist, heterocis-normative, white-supremacist patriarchy.

Tarot helps us re-write the vocabulary of power, and with it, to strengthen our muscles of radical, revolutionary, and abolitionist dreaming. The deck eschews conventional tarot cards like the Emperor or Knight in favor of non-hierarchical cards honoring revolutionary concepts and figures such as the Crone, the Healer, and the Rebel, among others. Figures in the deck have bodies of all shapes and sizes, colors, genders, ages, and abilities—together, elaborating a vision of collective liberation and co-resistance.

Contributors

Abdu Ali (The Artist card) | adrienne maree brown (essay contributor) | Amina Ross (The Accountability card) | Amir Khadar (The Shadow card) | Anne Horel (The Caravan card) | Aparna Sarkar (The Moon card) | Cassie Thornton (The Ancestors card) | Charmaine Bee (The Whore card) | Cole M. James (The Suit of Blades) | Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (The Doula card) | d. Wright (The Fool card) | Edgar Fabián Frías (The Mutant card) | Elicia Epstein (organizer, curator, the Suit of Spirals) | emet ezell (author of guidebook) | Eva Wu (The Suit of Vessels) | INVASORIX (The Suit of Flowers) | J Wu (The Love card) | Jennifer Moon and jarret hood (The World card) | Katie Kaplan (The Establishment card) | Karryl Eugene (The Artist card) | Kinoko (The Courage card) | lawrence barriner II (essay contributor) | Malak Mattar (The Death card) | Malaya Tuyay (The Hermit card) | Mark Allen (The Chaos card) | Nathaniel Russell (The Dream card) | Nissa Gustafson (The Chrysalis card) | nkiruka oparah (The Uprising card) | Petra Floyd (The Doula card) | Scarlet Tunkl (The Portal card) | Shoog McDaniel (The Sun Card) | Syan Rose (The Star card)

About the Creator

Elicia Epstein is a semi-nomadic multimedia artist and organizer, currently getting their Master’s in Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Elicia’s creative inquiries manifest conceptually and promiscuously across a broad range of media including sculpture, installation, photo, video, performance, publication, printmaking, collage, and cross-media collaboration. Her work has been shown in several places in and outside of the US, most recently at the Oakland Museum of California’s Hella Feminist exhibit.

Intricate Intimate

on view May 6, 2021 – June 2, 2021
opening reception May 6, 6-9pm

Allouche Gallery 82 Gansevoort St, NY NY 10014

Co-curated by Swoon, Monica Canilao and BLK PALATE, The Intricate Intimate presents a group exhibition focusing on the erotic. Featuring 25 established and emerging artists, The Intricate Intimate offers a safe space for artists to explore the intricacies of erotic intimacy on their own terms and based on their own definitions. The exhibition invites viewers to consider questions such as what seduces you? What arouses your vulnerability? How does the intersection of identities and lived experiences inform sexual intimacy, among other questions. The collection of artists participating in the exhibition present works that inspire the audience to explore the intricacies of their own erotic intimacy.

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