Locus

May 7, 2022 - June 15, 2022

12:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Wednesday - Saturday

FOCA Exhibition Space, Chinatown

Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA) is a non-profit, independent, and membership-based organization that supports contemporary art in California.Curators Lab Exhibitions support emerging and mid-career artists by awarding grants to emerging curators who develop and present exhibitions in support of a curatorial thesis. In keeping with FOCA’s historical goal to provide documentation of each exhibition, curators produce a catalog of their choice and clarify their process of conceptualizing and organizing each exhibition. Exhibition installations and events are also documented through photographs, videos, and currently Zoom recordings posted on FOCA’s website.

Locus

Joshua Cabello, 2022 Paarsa Hajari, 2022 Victor Alvarez, 2022

Fellows of Contemporary Art is pleased to present Locus, curated, and organized by FOCA Curators Lab grant recipient Josh Cabello.

Locus features photography works by three artists who, although inhabiting radically different spaces, find communion in self-exploration. Through their photographs, they are addressing who they are, how they identify, and how their experiences are shaped by varying gender identities, sexual orientations, race, family dynamics, and geography. At its core this exhibition is about relationships: the relationship the artists have to one another, to their medium, and to themselves.

Locus refers to the term ‘Locus of Mediation’, coined by French psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan, meaning “the site is where the gaze meets the subject of representation”. Cabello states, “Self-portraiture is a tool for capturing not just the physical body, but the essence of a person and the moment. In this sense, portraiture as a medium extends past the physical body. Inanimate objects become a source of the self and one is left wondering whether the meaning is inherent or projected onto objects. How do we project our bodies onto objects? How do we uncover landscapes on our bodies?”

Artists

Josh Cabello,Victor Isaac Alvarez,Paarsa Hajari

Curated by

Josh Cabello

is a visual artist, curator, and drag queen born in 1997 in Los Angeles. He graduated from Brown University in 2019 with an A.B. in both Visual Art and English. He has exhibited at venues including the RISD Museum, Providence, RI; the Cohen Gallery, Providence, RI; Rare Cafe, Los Angeles, CA; and performed in the LA Art Show, Los Angeles, CA. His solo show, Extra New Topographics at the List Arts Center in RI, led him to receive the Belsky-Moranis award. In June 2021 he curated a group show titled Like Water at SoLA Contemporary in Los Angeles. Through his drag persona, Sunset Blush, he explores traditional binaries as sites of play. Drawing on everything from art history to contemporary modes of queerness, his practice is deeply rooted in the tradition of utilizing aesthetics and frivolity as revolutionary tools. Sunset Blush’s world plays with beauty, flamboyance, and far-out fantasy; she looks forward to a future where every bitch can feel their fantasy too.