Bending the Binary, and Our Perception of History

Posted: September 29, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What We Do After from August 28 to September 30, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James

When Brian Van Camerik began the project Homosocial, a collection of old photographs showing intimacy amongst same sex couples from the past in 2017, it could not have come at a better time. With President Donald Trump beginning his reign of terror on queer people across the country, it seemed very difficult to find hope and joy in queerness. For many young queer people, being different can feel isolating, and due to crises such as the AIDS epidemic leading to fewer older queer people, they have less elders to guide them. With Homosocial, Van Camerik shows that queer love and joy has always been around- even in times of great hardship. As described on the project’s website, “these photographs span decades and all depict same-gendered couples of men, women, and everyone in between displaying intimacy towards one another.” Throughout the series, multiple pairs are seen as described; some with arms around one another, others with hands clasped. However, what stood out to me is that none of the photographs feature the couples kissing. This adds to the power of the pieces. Queer love was forbidden in most societies in the past, and public displays of it could lead to detainment, violence, death, and/or ostracism. Many of these couples no doubt had to hide their love for each other, though that does not make these small moments captured any less romantic. It adds a deep layer of nuance, and calls attention to a hard truth: public romance is treated as a privilege.

Homosocial, Processing Gender Aspirations (2022), Silver gelatin print, paper, ink.

Throughout the run of the Stamp Gallery exhibit What We Do After, the piece Processing Gender Aspirations from Homosocial has always stood out to me. Although small in dimension and seemingly simple in composition, the depth within the artwork and the project itself makes a deep impact. On a background reminiscent of rippling water flecked through with gold, a black and white photograph is centered. The photograph shows a child dressed in a uniform-like outfit complete with Mary Jane shoes. The child’s gender is not obvious, nor is it specified by artist Brian Van Camerik. Two paired sets of zig zagged lines attach the photo to three simple words, creating the phrase “bending the binary.” As explained by Van Camerik in an Instagram post for the piece, 

I use microprocessing technology as a visual metaphor to illustrate how the individuals in these photographs have connected—the same way that microchips are connected on a circuit board… As a non-binary artist, I am presenting someone I wish to emulate. And while aspirational, this piece is also transgressive. Microprocessing technology operates in binary code but somehow the child thrives within this system and defies the gender binary to boot.

 Processing Gender Aspirations is one of the few pieces in the Homosocial project that features only one figure, and one who also does not fit traditional ideas of the gender binary. As Van Camerik explains above, the child in this piece reflects a quiet rebellion, existing in a normal life as a person who “bends the binary.”

More than anything though, this entire series represents something that was as important back then as it is now, that queer people are normal. The poses in the photographs are no different from any photograph you may see of a cisgendered or heterosexual couple, pushing against the idea that queer people are dangerous or deviant. Queer people love and live just like anyone else does, something important to represent especially with all the anti-gay and anti-transgender legislation popping up all over the country. Joy is essential to change, something expressed through the Homosocial collection as well as the current CAPP exhibit at the Stamp Gallery. At the very bottom of the Homosocial website, a dedication can be found, reading “For the individuals who were lost, silenced, or hurt because of whom they loved.” Remembering the faces of those who came before in the struggle for LGBTQ rights and their joy in the face of adversity can help us find our way and begin to build a better life for all people. 

Homosocial’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023.

Contemplating “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other”

Posted: September 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore, Top Picks! | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Arrivals 2021 from August 30 to October 16, 2021 at the STAMP Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | written by Isabella Chilcoat

Faith Couch, a young and electrifying contemporary photographer, breaks through walls of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality through her pure, intimate, and unapologetic images. Graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2019, Couch has already exhibited across the globe in the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University,  Queen’s University Belfast, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, and International Center of Photography to name a few, and has earned a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Art and Style. She currently works out of Baltimore, MD and continues to gain notoriety throughout the world for her sensitive and provocative photographs.

Remarkably, two of her works, selected by University of Maryland’s CAPP committee for the University’s permanent collection, currently hang in the STAMP Gallery inspiring feelings of reverence, awe, and intrigue. Fitting seamlessly into this year’s CAPP committee’s mission, the members note that both selected works inspire internal and interpersonal discussion into the complexities and dynamisms of the Black experience.

“The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture”

Couch, Faith. “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other.” Faith Couch, 2020, https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#1. Accessed 17 September 2021.

One of her pieces adorning the walls in the STAMP Gallery exhibit is Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, 2021, Archival Inkjet Print, 24” x 36” that has sparked incredible conversation within the gallery in only its first month on display. The luminous photo print describes a scene of Faith, herself, and her partner nude in a vast grass field as they rest intertwined with loving gazes over each other’s bodies as if to absorb every moment in the presence of the person they love. The composition betrays the immaculate skill of the artist and tantalizes the eye of the viewer with its soft diagonals of limbs and torsos, while employing a fascinating one point perspective from the impressions of cut grass opening toward the couple who reclines in the central foreground and basks in golden sunlight.

Delving more deeply into Couch’s exquisite technique, the image contains shadows on the bottom corners taking the form of a subtle vignette, and, as the viewer draws nearer the picture, they become a part of the vignette that distances them from the scene. Here, the artist establishes privacy and safe distance for her figures so that they remain undisturbed, but, equally, to enforce that the viewers may only experience this moment vicariously by removing room to objectify her subject’s bodies. The serenity and intimacy is preserved forever.

Couch has commented “The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture.” Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other captures the history and folklore, indispensable to Black culture and invokes the internal landscape of both dark and joyous memories through the image of Black people expressing tenderness, love, and intimacy. She composed a highly personal image that speaks especially to members of the diaspora to establish connectivity and community in shared happiness and pain. Ultimately, via Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, Faith Couch asserts that the greatest statement against injustice and disharmony is love.

P.S. I HIGHLY encourage you to check out all of Faith Couch’s works on display in person for the full viewing experience (socially distant of course) as well as her instagram for exclusive content and even more shots of her work and artistic process

Faith Couch’s work is included in New Arrivals 2021 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 30 – October 16, 2021. Couch will be joining the other artists of New Arrivals 2021 in an artist talk in the Gallery in October 2021.

For more information on Faith Couch, visit https://www.faithcouch.com/#1 

For more information and to view Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other virtually, visit https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#4 

For more information on New Arrivals 2021 and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery .