ance

March 12 - 18, 2020

​Exhibition co-curated with Ana Briz

USC Roski Graduate Gallery,  Los Angeles

This Body Can’t Be All There Is explores the material precarity of the contemporary built environment. In this exhibition, Johnny Forever removes construction materials from their original purpose and function, combining them with queer femme tropes to form fantastical new configurations and build metaphors around the vulnerability of structures both physical and theoretical. Forever’s practice weaves surrealist narrative through vivid, animated video and often drag-inflected performance to explore labor and longing with a particular focus in these themes as a part of queer and trans cultural production. Their current investment in ubiquitous construction materials like roofing and drywall arrives after several years spent working home renovation jobs in Montreal.

This Body Can’t Be All There Is features a live performance during opening night. A special thank you goes out to the performers who made it possible: Gambletron, Paulson Lee, and noé olivas. The sound for this exhibition was designed and produced by Gambletron.

This exhibition is curated in collaboration with Ana Briz, doctoral student in the American Studies and Ethnicity program at the University of Southern California and recent graduate of the MA in the Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere program at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.​

THIS             

BODY             

          CAN'T BE

  ALL THERE IS