Another Perfect

Saturday, June 2nd, 2018 at 7 pm, $7-$10

Another Perfect is a screening of three trans / non-binary artists summoning a time and space in which queerness is unbound. This is not fantasy – the works are glimpses into other-times and other-spaces, unclaimed then’s and there’s wherein bodies run free. Transhood is an anachronism to any understanding of selfhood; our day-to-day is marred by the burden of binary structures, asking us to be “yes” or “no,” “on” or “off,” “this” or “that” — Another Perfect recognizes transhood as a space (and time) of potential, released from the carnal metrics of today.

This event was curated by Luis Mejico, F4F’s 6th and final artist of the inaugural season of RESIDE. F4F is a domestic venue based in Little Village, Chicago. We cultivate a Femme community, center Blackness, and we expand upon understandings of what a domestic space can be. RESIDE is a five-month series of programs featuring five of Chicago’s most innovative emerging artists, all of whom happen to be native Chicagoans. Each month is dedicated to an individual artist’s visions and passions. F4F provides RESIDE artists an avenue to engage in creative practice and community-building through artist-led, and neighborhood driven making.

Luis Mejico is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator. She has performed and exhibited work at the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, Queens Museum in New York, Mana Contemporary Chicago, Links Hall, Zhou Brothers Art Center, The Oak Park Art League, The Uptown Arts Center, and Jan Brandt Gallery, among others.

Mejico’s practice gives form to trans anxieties and excitations. Through video, performance, and fiber works, she exposes the complexities and absurdities of a body undefinable. The work largely addresses the trans body’s confusion and opposition toward itself, and communicates an ambivalence to the carnal experience of transhood. This and other frustrations are addressed through works that are often humorous, displaying a sense of sarcasm in pithy bursts that replicate the jarring feeling of thinking of one’s body as only a semblance of truth. Mejico’s practice collapses real and unreal realms to produce uncomfortable and alluring half-truths.

“My practice relies on my ability to employ protective architecture, charms, and symbols in my work in order to grant myself power and comfort in spaces that deny these things to me. I’m interested in exploring these forms of material and ritualistic therapy in order to prescribe remedies for the intergenerational trauma that my family and I have experienced as Sino Vietnamese Americans, an identity both alienated and fetishized by the western gaze. This healing is also further complicated by my own identity as a trans non-binary individual, as my place of belonging becomes increasingly obscured. This drives me to demand a space in which every facet of myself can coexist simultaneously. In such spaces, I suggest that the objects I create possess mana given to them through cultural and personal histories. Through this, I am working through a methodology of learning that results in me reorienting not only myself but also the objects that I work with. This results in my objects developing characters and personalities that work with me to achieve maximum comfort, with 100% protection guaranteed (or your money back).” – Mac Do

Wayne P. Tate Jr. (they/them) makes several works in the vein of an elaborate soul-seeking process. Through comics, videos, and even explorations of video games, they’re attempting to ask intimate questions about the way they exist within rigid systems of gender, race, sexuality, and ability.

Often in flux, Wayne made The Ghost Who Carries Me about the ongoing difficult relationship they’ve built with their depression, in attempt to coherently communicate the way their depression has been both an ally and an enemy.

Program Notes:

How to Settle In between Spaces: a speculative supposition on safety practices, Mac Do

Untitled (Little Happy Terrors), Luis Mejico

The Ghost Who Carries Me, Wayne P. Tate Jr.

http://www.femme4fem.me/

http://www.femme4fem.me/reside/