CUE Present: A discussion on GenderFail’s An Anthology on Failure 2, 11/12

[Image description: In blue text on a white background is the word “CUE,” which is the logo of the foundation.]

Thursday, November 12, from 6 to 8pm ET
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GenderFail’s An Anthology on Failure 2: Building on our Failed States, released in August 2020, is the second in GenderFail’s anthology series on the creative potential of failure. In this panel discussion presented by CUE Art Foundation, GenderFail founder Be Oakley will speak with anthology contributors Anthea Black with Jessica Whitbread from The HIV Howler, Shawn Escarciga of the NYC Low-Income Artist+Freelancer Relief Fund, and Kira Wisniewski of Art+Feminism; they will also be joined by Kamra Sadia Hakim, founder of Activation Residency, who will respond to the gap in the voices of Black trans-lead organizations in the anthology.

Panelist presentations will be followed by a conversation with Be Oakley on themes of institutional failure, non-dominant organizing, and collective solidarity. With endless examples of cultural institutions such as the Whitney Museum, New Museum, and others failing to support artists from all backgrounds, this panel looks to celebrate the radical institutions, collectives, and communities that do the real work of fostering autonomy from systems of white supremacy and racial capitalism. 

You can purchase a copy of the book on a sliding scale here. 25% of all sales will be invested in Activation Residencyleading up to the panel. 

The event will be live-captioned as well as recorded, captioned, and posted to our website after the event. If you have additional access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org (ideally with at least 48 hours before the event) and we will do our best to accommodate you.

GenderFail, An Anthology on Failure 2: Building on our Failed States 

In 2018, GenderFail released the first edition of an anthology on the creative potential of failure. GenderFail: An Anthology On Failure first sought out perspectives on the concept of failure from artists, activists, writers, and curators. Each participant was invited to contribute work on topics such as ableism, mental health, passing, whiteness, colonization, police brutality, and how moments of failure within these social systems can have potentially ambiguous benefits. The resulting anthology does not cohesively interpret the concept of failure, but hopefully incites a collective engagement with failure that is as messy as it is thought provoking.  

In deciding to work on the second volume of this anthology in January of 2019, GenderFail invited a group of institutions, collectives, and communities to discuss the failures in each of their given fields. The contributors invited have organized to try and create something meaningful within the failure of dominant culture(s). GenderFail considers failure to be a catalyst from which non-dominant culture emerges; we seek to explore the failures that mark the beginnings of many radical institutions, collectives, and communities. GenderFail, An Anthology on Failure 2: Building on our Failed States features contributions from Anonymous, Art+Feminism, Decolonize This Place, GenderFail, The HIV Howler, Lilly Hern-Fondation of CUE Art Foundation, NYC Low-Income Artist+Freelancer Relief Fund, Quaranzine, Queer.Archive.Work, Thank God For Abortion, and W.A.G.E.

Be Oakley is a writer, facilitator, and publisher based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2015 they started GenderFail, a publishing and programming initiative that seeks to encourage projects that foster an intersectional queer subjectivity. Their work has been shown in programs and exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the International Center of Photography, The Studio Museum of Harlem, and many others. Oakley’s publications can be found in collections at The Museum of Modern Art Library, The Met Library Special Collections, the Whitney Museum Library, and over 40 others.

Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker based in San Francisco and Toronto. Her studio work addresses feminist and queer history, collaboration, materiality, and labour, and has been exhibited in Canada, the U.S., France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. Black is co-editor of HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education with Shamina Chherawala and The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design with Nicole Burisch, and publisher of The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism with Jessica Whitbread. She is an Assistant Professor in Printmedia and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts.  

Shawn Escarciga (he/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and organizer exploring the intersection of performance, design, and activism. Shawn's work examines labor, class, and queerness, while speculating what non-oppressive, anti-capitalistic structures of art-making/valuing might look like. Their work has been seen throughout galleries, museums, sex parties, and DIY spaces across NYC (Exponential Festival [V Real and Legitimate MFA Thesis Show], MIX NYC, Panoply, CPR, Grace, Inferno, etc.), domestically, and abroad (Tempting Failure Biennial, London; Month of Performance Art, Berlin). They are the founder and co-organizer of  the NYC Low-Income Artist+Freelancer Relief Fund alongside co-organizer Nadia Tykulsker. Since March 2020, the fund has raised about a quarter of a million dollars and paid out to nearly 1,000 people in NYC. Shawn is the former Assistant Director of arts non-profit Culture Push and served on the organizing committee of the New Museum Union.  

Kamra Sadia Hakim (they/them), the founder of Activation Residency, is a 28 year-old occupied Munsee Lenape territory-based futurity artist using their Black trans body as a portal to the futures needed now. Kamra is an entrepreneur, musician, performing artist, and curator devoted to the power of imagination, and love as the answer.

Jessica Whitbread is a queer activist and artist based in Kyrgyzstan and Toronto. Her work includes LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN and No Pants No Problem; she is a co-curator of PosterVirus with Alex McClelland, publisher of The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism with Anthea Black, and publisher of Tea Time: Mapping Informal Networks of Women Living with HIV in 2015. She was the Wesley Mancini Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Art and Innovation, a recipient of the Premier’s Award from the Government of Ontario, and the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award. In 2016, she birthed twins and advocated to openly breastfeed them in a Canadian context.  

Kira Wisniewski is the Executive Director of Art+Feminism. She has a can-do attitude and passion for community, capacity building, and the arts with an expertise in non-profit structures, operations, and events. Outside of Art+Feminism, Kira is the host and co-organizer of CreativeMornings/Baltimore, co-founder of the non-profit 826DC, is an Awesome Foundation Baltimore co-dean, and volunteers with Fluid Movement and Special Olympics DC. Born in South Korea and raised on Florida sunshine (where she earned her degree at the University of Miami), she has proudly been calling Baltimore home since 2012, where she lives with her partner and her pet rabbit, Billie Jean.