top of page
The QC ONLY TRANSPARENT.png
Search
Writer's pictureJason Wyman
Dec 9, 20245 min read

CALL FOR ART: Nothing New

OVERVIEW

Hey Queers & Immigrants & & Comrades!


I am thrilled to be curating with Bushra Gill Nothing New. It is a CALL FOR ART for Immigrant, Queer, and Queer Immigrant artists, performers, poets, chefs, tinkerers, choreographers, scrapbookers, genealogists, filmmakers, musicians, altar makers, dancers, sculptors, designers, actors, curators, culture tenders-makers-bearers.


The due date is: DECEMBER 31, 2024. SUBMIT HERE. (Note: You will ne1ed to login with a Google account to submit to the form.)


Here's a short video introducing the whole thing (includes subtitles.)




 

DETAILS
Curatorial Statement

Immigrants, Queers, and Queer Immigrants / Immigrant Queers have been and will always be here. There is no past nor future without us. We exist because people move by force, necessity, and (sometimes) choice and sexuality / gender are complex (not binary), regardless of what dominant society legislates or social norms dictate. And it is our positionality (individually, intersectionally, and collectively) to domination that affirms: THIS IS NOTHING NEW. 


Frequently, in times of political upheaval, art, stories, songs, dances, rituals, and traditions become targets of erasure. It is a form of censorial annihilation meant to ensure future generations know little to nothing about their forebears. For if even a breadcrumb were to remain, our descendants will have the tools to liberate their beings from domination.


Right here, right now we – Immigrant / Queer / Artists – are under direct political attack, AND it is imperative that we work together to preserve and promulgate our art, stories, songs, dances, rituals, and traditions as a means of survival.


NOTHING NEW is a CALL FOR ART, A GROUP SHOW & AN ARCHIVAL CATALOG curated by Bushra Gill & Jason Wyman / Queerly Complex for Immigrant, Queer, and Queer Immigrant / Immigrant Queer artists, storytellers, dancers, mediamakers, musicians, photographers, performers, poets, creators, and culture tenders / makers as a means to both cultivate solidarity AND create breadcrumbs for future generations. 


Guidelines

  • NO NEW WORK OR WORDS! Please simply repurpose something you’ve already made.

  • GOOGLE DRIVE LOGIN needed for submission. 

  • Must self-identify as an ARTIST in any discipline / medium / tradition / practice

  • Must self-identify as an IMMIGRANT and/or QUEER

  • Must agree to the FREE DISTRIBUTION of their ART / WORK submitted using a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license 

  • Only ONE ART / WORK per Artist.

  • All ART / WORK must be:

  • Digital (pdf, png, jpg)

  • Formatted to print on an Letter-sized (8.5 inch by 11 inch with .5 inch margins) piece of paper

  • Black & White or Color  

  • 300 DPI

 

SOCIAL MEDIA ASSETS SHARE
Square Posts - DOWNLOAD & SHARE

Instagram Posts & Reels
 
About the Curators
Photo of Bushra Gill, smiling wearing a mauve hijab while making art.
Bushra Gill - www.bushragill.com

Bushra Gill finds order within the chaos of everyday life through art.


She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and emigrated to Houston, Texas, with her family as a small child. Drawn to art from a young age, she graduated from Pratt Institute in 1994 with a BFA in sculpture. She has been awarded residencies at Pilchuck Glass School and Kala Art Institute.


Gill spent many years of working as a museum educator at various galleries and museums including The Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center and The Rotunda Gallery, while also working as a studio assistant to various artists including Maya Lin, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and Maria Elena Gonzalez. Currently living and working in northern California, Gill also serves on the board of Oakland Art Murmur and curates exhibitions.


A photo of Jason Wyman, an artist with clown make up looking out a window wearing a red mesh take top.

Jason Wyman is Queerly Complex, an anti-binary social practice artist living & creating on Yelamu, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land or what colonizers named San Francisco. A mystical convener, Wyman creates spaces for comrades to explore & discover who they be individually & collectively. They work with dreams, value(s), structures, & equity to conjure forms of liberation & healing. Wyman’s art-making centers the messy, intangible, emotive, & esoteric bits that make us human. 


It’s resulted in #StickyQuestions with artists Celi Tamayo-Lee & Mary-Claire Amable for the Asian Art Museum, a national Youth Media Network co-produced with Myah Overstreet, the Immigrant Artist Network co-founded with Rupy C. Tut, Tree of Change co-founded with Crystal Mason, and the Culture Tending Collective & Commons co-founded with with Crystal Mason, Vanessa Rodrigue Minero, and Wendy Martinez-Morroquin.


Wyman is also a Founding Member of the 465 Collective.


465 Collective: Gallery

465 Collective is BlackMaria Microcinema / Maria Judice, Alchemy Film Foundation / Madison Young, EARTH Lab / Beth Stephens, Ginger Yifan Chan, Scott Sessions / Queer Bedtime Stories, and Jason Wyman / Queerly Complex. It builds upon a long legacy of queer artists in Yelamu, the unceded lands of the Ramaytush Ohlone, which is also known as San Francisco, making a way for the creation of queer works across disciplines, cultures, practices, traditions, and generations. 


The location of 465 Collective: Gallery is the former site of Femina Potens, a non-profit art gallery and performance art space active from 2001 to 2016 founded by artistic director Madison Young, which sought to bring greater visibility and advancement to female artists, including queer and transgender ones. The gallery highlighted feminist pornography, as well as sex work.


NOTHING NEW will be the first show in the newly formed gallery. 

 
Some Resources

Our collective liberation is tied / bound to one other, all our relatives human and more-than-human, and collectively, our power is an unstoppable force.


Here are some of the things I am reading / watching / listening to that are helping me better understand how to be a comrade to Immigrants and fellow Queers.


  • Horizon Foundation's State of the Movement 2024: Our Collective Power Horizons facilitated by Horizon's President Roger Doughty and LGBTQ leaders Fran Hutchins, Executive Director of Equality Federation; Andy Marra, CEO of Advocates for Trans Equality; Ricardo Martinez, Executive Director of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders; and Shannon Minter, Legal Director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights about the present and future of the queer movement - This is a must watch for tactics on how we build across states, identities, cultures, and generations. I found it highly practical while also offering frameworks for hope.

  • Advocates for Trans Equality Know Your Rights Resources - This is a list of various legal overviews by and for trans folks. They are all keyworded to make finding what you are looking for easy.

  • Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Premilla Nadasen - I am still working my way through this book, but damn! This is an excellent account of all of the caring industries and how capitalism racializes and genders all aspects of care as a means of extraction and exploitation. It speaks directly to intersections between race, immigration, disability, gender, sexuality, and class. I do need to take my time with it as it is highly academic and dense. But once the synapses fire, it makes me really examine the structures of care.

  • Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form edited by Teagan Bradway and Elizabeth Freeman - I've just started this one, and it is even denser than Care. Still, the moments of clarity show how queer and trans kinship across identities / cultures (and with their own specificities) provides us respite from the state and its oppression and persecution.

  • Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Second Edition edited by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith with a foreward by CeCeMcDonald - I read this during the beginning of lockdown. It gives an account of how the state through prisons, jails, and detention centers (private and public) police, oppression, confine, and punish trans people because of their trans embodiment, which also includes the embodiment of race, class, immigration status, religion, and location. It contains a range of styles of writing, including trans siblings who have been or are incarcerated.

728 views0 comments
bottom of page