Jeffrey Gibson
By Manu Sharma
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York is presenting I'm a thousand different people—Every one is real, a group show that is on view from March 15, 2024 - January 5, 2025. The exhibition ran through Pride month brings together works from over 20 intergenerational practices from the LGBTQIA+ community at the gallery in Manhattan. One of the show’s curators, Stamatina Gregory (they/she), Head Curator / Director of Exhibitions and Collections, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art joins STIR for an interview that sheds light on the rich body of art being exhibited in the group show.
The show’s title is taken from a drawing by Candy Darling (she/her, 1944 - 1974), who was a transgender American actress often associated with Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987). She appeared in his film works Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971) besides being a muse for the American experimental rock band Velvet Underground.
I’m a thousand different people features some of the most radical, gender-bending artists such as Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950 - 2020), who performed lead vocal duties for seminal English industrial band Throbbing Gristle and pursued a rich practice in visual art and performance art, centred on her body and love story with Lady Jaye Breyer. P-Orridge’s work Subliminal Memory No. 1 (2005) is on display, which shows a rather shocking scene from a surgical operation on the artist’s ear. Such body modification operations were a part of the Pandrogeny Project, which documented P-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer’s attempts to modify their bodies such that they would become one with each other, effectively transforming into a ‘Pandrogyne,’ or single entity. Gregory discusses the show, telling STIR, “The exhibition is full of rich materiality, from Alisa Sikelianos-Carter's painting shimmering with glitter to Jeffrey Gibson’s combination of photography, drawing, painting, beadwork, and ephemera…” The curator believes that the works on view traverse disciplinary boundaries and the museum has set up the art exhibition in such a manner as to allow pieces to point and refer to one another materially and iconographically.
Gregory discusses the intergenerationality of the show, telling STIR, “Early career artists are shown, and those who have been living and working in our communities for decades, along with those that have passed on.” One of the aspects of the show that binds together many of the works on display is the sheer radicality that it reveals, of the lives of artists such as P-Orridge. For example, the aforementioned Pandrogeny Project is regarded as a powerful statement of P-Orridge and Breyer’s unconditional love for each other and a prominent example of artistic expression rooted in transness and gender nonconformity.
The artists in I’m a thousand different people also include Ana Benaroya, Aziz + Cucher, Candy Darling, Angela Dufresne, Jeffrey Gibson, Gotscho, Morgan Gwenwald, Geoffrey Hendricks, Tommy Kha, Baseera Khan, Kia LaBeija, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Beau McCall, Pierre Molinier, Carlos Motta, John Schacht, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Kali Spitzer, Linda Stein and Linn Underhill. The show is curated by Gregory, Noam Parness, Former Associate Curator / Exhibitions Manager and Judy Giera, Collections Manager at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.
‘I’m a thousand different people’ is a large and important presentation from Leslie-Lohman for the breadth of queer art it treats audiences to. Additionally, the show allows viewers to witness the evolution of queer iconographies, in keeping with the growth of the LGBTQIA movement.
‘I'm a thousand different people—Every one is real’ is on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art from March 15, 2024 - January 5, 2025.