SaveArtSpace is pleased to present “Looking Forward // Queer Futures” a cross-media gallery and public art exhibition curated by Mich Miller, Sky Cubacub, & Rebecca Shippee. The selected artists are Brendan Shea, Ari Salka, Marne Lucas, Toni Smalls, Daniel Alejandro Trejo, Hannah Rubin, CJ Miller, Duff Norris, Bailey Davenport, and Dustin Steuck.

Queer people have always looked ahead from within their present realities and created new futures and communities in trying, often isolated, and uncertain times. "Queer" is used as an identity and community term for non-normativity - both as a celebration and a reclamation. Our understanding of the fluidity of gender and sexuality is growing. As our culture shifts and queer fluidity is more accepted in some ways, legislation and violence targeting our community has remained. There still exists an urgent need to visualize queer futures.

During the week of August 24, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces throughout Los Angeles. These spaces will be on view for at least one month.

This public art exhibition is made possible in part by the Print Shop LA .

Curators

Mich Miller (b. 1992, New York) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary who works in the mediums of painting, printmaking, design, and installations as part of their practice. Miller earned their BFA from School of the Artist institute of Chicago in 2015 and is a current MFA candidate at Yale University. In 2018 they co-founded The Print Shop LA—a collaborative printmaking studio in Los Angeles, which offers opportunities for both internships and artists-in-residence. Miller has exhibited work in both solo and group shows at various spaces nationally, including New Image Art Gallery, RV Gallery, Neon Raspberry Art House, and All Star Press Chicago. Most recently, their work has included installations and murals for major media brands such as Pitchfork Music Festivals, Vans Skateboarding, and Facebook (through their artist-in-residence program). 

Through abstraction, Mich Miller investigates the dynamics of gender and queerness through playful color, form, and language. Miller's suggestive forms, in relation to hard-edged geometric abstraction, explore and deconstruct formal composition solutions; they continue to develop a vocabulary of shapes and color relationships, referential of landscape, architecture, the body, light, and playful design.

Connect with Mich on Instagram at @MichMillerPrint

Sky CubaCub, I am a nonbinary queer and disabled Filipinx human from Chicago, IL with life long anxiety and panic disorders. I first dreamed of this collection when I was in high school and couldn’t find a place where I could buy a chest binder as a person who was under 18, and who didn't have access to a credit card to buy one online. I’m especially interested in Rebirth Garments being accessible to queer and disabled youth and I’m working on creating a program for making free/reduced priced garments for people in need.

In my practice, the intensive handwork makes the process the most important part and gives me inspiration. Chainmaille has been the catalyst to every other medium that I excel in; all of the mediums I enjoy are obsessive and have repetitive patterns. It is the slow, thoughtful process that holds value and heals my mind. Through chainmaille, I have found my patience. For me, everyday is a performance where I bring my body as a kinetic sculpture into the consciousness of the people I interact with in passing and on a daily basis. I embody the spirit of Radical Visibility, and Rebirth Garments is my soft armor. I consider it armor because it has the power to give you the confidence and strength to feel comfortable in your first skin. I have been building myself this armor or protection, not against harm exactly, but as a way to give me courage. Chainmaille and Rebirth Garments are a prosthetic for the communication of my inner world. My body, my identity and my prosthesis are one cohesive being.

Connect with Sky on Instagram at @RebirthGarments

Rebecca Shippee (b. 1991 Troy, NY) received her BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from Purchase College in 2012. She attended Yale/Norfolk School of Art in 2012 and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2018. She currently lives and works in New Haven, CT.

Connect with Rebecca on Instagram at @RebeccaShippe

Participating Organizations

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.

Print Shop LA strives to be the community resource you can always turn to. We offer Printing services as well as public and private workshops to learn any of the Printing methods we offer. Become a Member, an Intern, or one of our Artist in Residence for access to print using any of our resources and get help from our talented team of in house Printers

Selected Artists

Location: N Normandie Ave & Melrose Ave

BRENDAN SHEA (b.1995 Massachusetts) Is an Interdisciplinary artist working in Austin, Texas. Through the lens of painting Shea examines epistemology, queerness and materiality. Shea received his BFA in painting from Maine College of Art in 2018 and is a MFA candidate at University of Texas at Austin. Shea has exhibited work at Ortega Y Gasset Projects, SPACE Gallery, Able Baker Contemporary, The Portland Museum of Art, Boston University Galleries, Border Patrol, The Magenta Suite, and Grant Wahlquist Gallery.

Website: www.brendan-shea.com

Connect with Brendan on Instagram at @brendan_r_shea.

Location: Melrose Ave & St Andrews Pl

Ari Salka (b. 1993 in Seattle, WA) is a LA-based artist, primarily working through painting and drawing. Salka holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and MFA in Painting from UCLA (2019). Salka studied at the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art and received the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in Norfolk, CT (2015). Their works live in collections in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Seattle. I paint self-portraits of my trans body, representing current and past selves. These bodies, these people, and sometimes lovers of past selves, are constantly shifting, through rebirths, enmeshing, while also differentiating from one another. Ghosts from the past emerge from earthly forms, signifying dysphoric rebirth and resurrection. Water is both weighted and buoyant, and the presence of sutures straddle fragility and strength. The self is oftentimes lost in translation, shifting in and out of differentiation from oneself to another version of self. Through repetition, expansiveness, and reclusiveness, my work battles distinctions between celebration and dismay.

Website: www.arisalka.com

Connect with Ari on Instagram at @AriSalka.

Location: Western Ave & Lemon Grove Ave

Marne Lucas aka CuntemporaryArtist is a multidisciplinary artist and end of life doula based in New York, USA. Her creative investigations are at the intersection of art, feminism and health, working in conceptual overlaps: life’s energy, beauty, the body, identity, intimacy, sexuality and mortality. Marne’s extensive ‘MLSP’ self-portraiture series (1995-present) pre-dates the “selfie”, depicting a parade of characters, making commentary about beauty, the feminine, social roles and gender, and frequently employs sexual metaphor with a sense of humor while pushing personal or political boundaries. Lucas’ current social practice endeavor Bardo ∞ Project explores creativity as a form of spiritual palliative care, collaborating with terminally ill artists to best express their legacy. Inspired by the Dharma Art, and palliative care movements, the aim is to illuminate the positive effects of art as mind and body are integrated; coupled with relics from those journeys. This work led her to become an end-of-life doula, a role acting as liaison to the dying and their families. An infrared video pioneer, Lucas uses military imaging technology in experimental films to reference surveillance culture and the fragility of human existence. Her black & white infrared short film on menopause Haute Flash (2017), was part of Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science, a touring video exhibition in the U.K. and E.U. Notable is her collaboration with Jacob Pander (Otto Wrek) to the erotic short film THE OPERATION (1995) depicting an eerie, sci-fi, surgeon/patient coupling in an operation room theater; the film became a cult classic, garnering many awards including Best Experimental Film, NY Underground Film Festival and has screened worldwide including the ICA London (1997), and the Uncensored Festival UK (2019). Marne exhibits nationally and internationally, and received a 2018 grant from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corp. administered by the LMCC, Regional Arts & Culture Council project grants, a 2016 Arts/Industry Kohler Co. factory residency (Foundry, Pottery), the Land Art Mongolia 360 Residency + Biennial, 2012 CentralTrak experimental film residency. Lucas served as advisory board to OUTsider Fest, a queer multi-arts Austin, TX and the now defunct harm reduction non-profit Danzine, a Portland, Oregon based harm reduction, outreach, and education organization by and for sex workers. Marne is a co-founder of Cuntemporary Artists Presents, a New York-based feminist artist collective. Marne is bisexual, a hydrophile and loves doom metal music.

Website: www.marnelucas.com

Connect with Marne on Instagram at @marnelucas.

Location: Melrose Ave & N Normandie Ave

Toni Smalls is a photographer and poet based in New York. They have been creating narrative based fashion work for the past year. Each photograph is inspired by their poetry and feelings of isolation, uncertainty, despair, the home life; as well as power, lust, rage, and euphoria. These themes are quintessential to the human experience, and they have highlighted their black experience through their usage of people of color in every photo. Through prop and fashion styling, location and model scouting, and finding the right poetry to enhance or inspire their concept; they are able to create a fictional world where fashion can make you feel something.   

Website: www.tonicreations.com

Connect with Toni on Instagram at @toni.creations.

Location: Melrose Ave & N Mariposa Ave

Daniel Alejandro Trejo is a Latinx, queer, visual artist based out of Stockton, CA working in ceramic sculpture with an adjacent practice in curatorial projects. He received his BA in Art Studio and Art History from University of California, Davis. Subsequent to completing his undergraduate studies, he obtained studio residency at Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento, where he concurrently taught ceramic classes to the community as an Educational Associate. Trejo's most recent solo exhibition was held in Reno, Nevada at Holland Project. He has also participated in group shows at venues in Los Angeles, Austin, and Chicago, and participated in a two-week intensive residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine. Trejo’s curatorial projects include co-organizing Sacramento Zine Fest and organizing group exhibitions under his collaborative project, Unibrow Collective. The collaborative projects aim to broaden conversations about practices in under- recognized communities in contemporary discourse, and provide curated spaces for different voices, experiences, and situations. He recently curated a booth for QiPO Art Fair in Mexico City during Arts Week featuring works from artists based out of Sacramento.

Trejo currently holds residency at Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento, CA where he maintains his studio practice.

Website: www.trejodaniel.com

Connect with Daniel on Instagram at @dnltrejo.

Location: Vine St & Romaine St

Hannah Rubin is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersections of performance, writing, ritual, photography, sculpture, installation, and book-making. Their practice, a site of opening into a gushing trans-human queerness, develops an intimacy that slops through and confounds relationality. In studying and making legible the processes of forming and being formed, hannah’s work relies on dexterity and flexibility, collaboration, research, criticality, and conversation. Their labor roots in the “erotic potential” of all matter (Audre Lorde) and embodied practice of queer, eco-feminist, and postcolonial theory.

They have performed or exhibited work in New York City, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Vermont, and San Francisco. In Los Angeles they’ve performed or exhibited work at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, REDCAT, Now Instant Image Hall, LA Art Book Fair (Printed Matter), Hosting Projects, AA/LA Gallery, and CalArts. Their poetry, essays, and fiction can be found in multiple publications and anthologies. Most recently their writing appears in SPIRIT (F Magazine), BOAAT Magazine (BOAAT Press), and The Yikes Tapes (Rivulet Press). They studied history and queer theory at Wesleyan University and hold a dual MFA in Art and Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, where they studied on the Truman Capote Fellowship. 

They run Poetry in the Dark, a community poetry listening series that happens occasionally, and coordinate “20 lines a day,” a year-long durational daily writing collaboration with sixteen other writers in Los Angeles. They are currently a Craft Future grantee (Center for Craft), and are developing a multi-platform experimental education project, “in touch: hand building queer community”. This project seeks to accessibly support queer and trans folks in developing intimate relationships with clay while at home during a global pandemic.

Website: http://www.hannahrubin.com

Connect with Hannah on Instagram at @fag_poems.

Location: N Wilton Pl & Melrose Ave (Original Image, Self-Portrait #6, was censored by the billboard company.)

CJ Miller (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist working in illustration, poetry, music, and dance. Her dance practice and instruction focuses on creating and facilitating spaces for empowered movement and radical self love. Her newest dance project is Leo Moon, an invitational space for exploring and engaging our bodies while dismantling hierarchies and shame. She illustrated and produced self-portrait - a trans/intersex body positive image printed on t-shirts which functioned as a wealth redistribution project between cisgender and transgender communities. She co-produced and designed "So You Think You’ve Met Your First Transperson?" an educational pamphlet to aid cisgender community in trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming identity sensitivity. It exists as a free resource with print options intended for DIY distribution at Soyouthink.org. She is the front person for dimber, a queer/trans agit prop pop group and is the bassist for Remorseless, anarcho queer death rock. CJ has taught courses and sat on panels focusing on the intersection of artistic practice, DIY culture, and activism. Her most recent poetry and illustration collection Lips Tick Vol 2, published through Arts’n’Crass, is the 2nd in a multi-volume work of queer, intersex, and transgender effluence.

What do we need to see or receive in order to feel like we are enough? What does a beautiful transgender body look like?

Body positive imagery for transgender people is scarce. The intent of this image is to encourage acceptance and empower love for trans bodies outside the current model which presses us towards surgery and alterations rooted in oppressive binary gender standards and the medical industrial complex. This image is an exercise of liberation from these constructs, for transgender and cisgender people alike. 

ALL TRANS BODIES ARE BEAUTIFUL - regardless of what we do with them. ALL INTERSEX BODIES ARE BEAUTIFUL - just as we are at birth, unmodified by violent, nonconsentual, and yet currently accepted medical practices of forced surgeries and pathologizing manipulations.  

Representation is vital. Most of the signals we receive in terms of transgender represenation, through media and public visibility, indicate that to be cis passing and conforming to dominant beauty standards are the keys to our success and liberation. This serves to reinforce fatphobic, ableist, ageist, cisheteronormative, white supremacist, patriarchal ideals and tells us that invisibility is the access point for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming bodies. All too often our culture supposes that if our trans children could access hormones at a young enough age to effectively assimilate and disappear into one extreme end of the gender spectrum, then they may avoid a life subjected to constant violence  - when instead we should be addressing the functions of a society that teaches us to be ashamed of being trans.  

Using words like “pre-op” assumes we are all looking to be “post-op”. This idea of “transition” is heavily cast upon all of us as an assumptive goal to be met. These notions must be challenged. There are innumerable reasons that trans or non-binary people may not have access to hormone replacement therapy or gender affirming surgeries. There are countless reasons why we may not want them at all. These ideas around “transition” also erase space for non-binary and gender non-conforming people.

Bioessentialism is a lie and it is killing people. Transphobia and transmisogyny is killing people. Forced intersex surgery is killing people. We are beautiful people that deserve more than to live in shame and fear. 

Gender is a social construct. Anatomy and genitalia do not define this for us. Regardless of what many of us have been told, we can empower our true selves by redefining and reclaiming our bodies. Hypersexuality and queer community have long been conflated in both positive and problematic ways. As we move forward, we should all be constantly negotiating consent on what feels special and pleasurable in sex without patricharical and heteronormative pressures. Naked bodies and representations of them are not inherently sexual. This image is a subversion of ideals and assumptions around bodies. It is resistance.\

No one needs body modification or surgery in order to be “trans enough”. There’s no such thing. This billboard is my banner of pride that we are all enough, as we are.

Connect with CJ on Instagram at @spookymiller_.

Location: Melrose Ave & Cahuenga Blvd

Duff Norris is an artist and writer currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He is focused on intimacy and interpersonal connection as the material of his work and he continues to dig at questions of audienceship and what happens when we specifically are in the room together. Through photography, performance, and installation, his resent work is reaching for a new kind of masculinity. Using self-portrait, coded symbols, and code-switching to investigate his own trans history, he creates a possible allegory for a broader understanding. He holds degrees from School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Pratt Institute. He has shown work in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, Tijuana, & Menzies Australia.

Website: www.duffnorris.com

Connect with Duff on Instagram at @duffnorris.

Location: Melrose Ave & N Ardmore Ave

Bailey Davenport - I produce paintings, videos, and performances that explore cultural identity and the politics of memory. Recently, as part of a series entitled “Testify!”, I paint portraits of publicly recognized survivors of sexual violence in the act of testifying to their experiences. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I hope to construct a sense of solidarity and community among sexual violence survivors through the use of speculative non-linear narratives that are part documentation and part call to action.

Website: www.baileyrdavenport.com

Connect with Bailey on Instagram at @baileyriverss.

Location: Western Ave & Oakwood Ave

Dustin Steuck is a performance-based moving-image installation artist currently living and working in Minneapolis, MN. His work explores queer narratives while integrating utopic theory influenced by digital platforms and historical imagery. Whether the outcome is an object, moving-image, or two-dimensional, his work is based on the need to document. Through grand scale projections, moving-image supports his conceptual interests while the projector fulfills his spatial objectives. With a political regime concentrated on highlighting societal differences, it is his ambition to restore focus on the queer body, the spaces they have occupied throughout history, and question how they are represented today.

Steuck received a double Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout), 2017. Recent accomplishments include selection as a finalist for the 2019 Jerome Fellowship at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a semifinalist for the Manifest Gallery’s One 8, The 8th Annual Manifest Prize, honorable mention in the International Sculpture Center’s 2017 Outstanding Student Achievement Award program, and was awarded a Student Research Grant funded by the University of Wisconsin-Stout, 2017. Steuck has exhibited his work locally at the Soo Visual Arts Center, Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota, and nationally at the Bradbury Art Museum in Jonesboro, AR and on a billboard for the 2020 Billboard Show curated by Christopher Vroom by The Billboard Creative in Los Angeles, CA."

Website: www.dustinsteuck.com

Connect with Dustin on Instagram at @DustinSteuck.

Curator

Location: N Gower St & Elanor Ave

Mich Miller (b. 1992, New York) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary who works in the mediums of painting, printmaking, design, and installations as part of their practice. Miller earned their BFA from School of the Artist institute of Chicago in 2015 and is a current MFA candidate at Yale University. In 2018 they co-founded The Print Shop LA—a collaborative printmaking studio in Los Angeles, which offers opportunities for both internships and artists-in-residence. Miller has exhibited work in both solo and group shows at various spaces nationally, including New Image Art Gallery, RV Gallery, Neon Raspberry Art House, and All Star Press Chicago. Most recently, their work has included installations and murals for major media brands such as Pitchfork Music Festivals, Vans Skateboarding, and Facebook (through their artist-in-residence program). 

Through abstraction, Mich Miller investigates the dynamics of gender and queerness through playful color, form, and language. Miller's suggestive forms, in relation to hard-edged geometric abstraction, explore and deconstruct formal composition solutions; they continue to develop a vocabulary of shapes and color relationships, referential of landscape, architecture, the body, light, and playful design.

Connect with Mich on Instagram at @MichMillerPrint