Overview

Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics

Curated by Jeanne Vaccaro with Stamatina Gregory

October 21—December 11, 2016
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery

Bring Your Own Body presents the work of transgender artists and archives, from the institutional and sexological to the personal and liminal. Taking its title from an unpublished manuscript by intersex pioneer Lynn Harris, the exhibit historicizes the sexological and cultural imaginary of transgender through a curatorial exploration of archival collections including the Kinsey Institute and the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. Simultaneously it presents contemporary transgender art and world making practices that contest existing archival narratives and construct new historical genealogies. Moving beyond the aesthetically defunct category of “identity politics” and the fraught gains of visibility, the artworks propose transgender as a set of aesthetics made manifest through multiple forms: paint, sculpture, textiles, film, digital collage, and performance.

Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics is curated by Jeanne Vaccaro with Stamatina Gregory and organized for The Cooper Union. BYOB is presented by The John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College.

Additional support for Bring Your Own Body has been provided by The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University; The Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University; Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania; International House Philadelphia; Penn Humanities Forum; The University of Pennsylvania Department of English; the University of Victoria Transgender Archives; Haverford College Libraries; the Haverford College Women*s Center; and Independent College Programs, Health Studies, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Concentration in Peace, Justice, and Human Rights at Haverford College.