the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar
Joy Episalla
Between the Sheets
This lecture took place on April 5th, 2010 at 6:30 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union
Lecture introduction
Joy Episalla discusses art and activism: the relationship between her individual art practice, her involvement in art collectives and her activist work. She traces the trajectories of imagined histories, actual histories and envisioned futures embodied in working between multiple modes of art production and activism.
About Joy Episalla
Joy Episalla is an artist who works in the interstices of photography, video and sculpture. Episalla has exhibited her work in the US and internationally including at the Wexner Center for the Arts; The Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; the Mannheimer Kunstverein; and Studio 1.1, London. Her video work scarf dissolves was shown at the 2009 Senza Frontiere Film Festival in Rome. She has taught in the graduate program of the International Center of Photography, and last fall gave a lecture on AIDS Political Funerals at Harvard during the symposium accompanying the exhibition ACT UP NY: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987-1993. A long-time AIDS activist and a founding member of fierce pussy, the lesbian public art collective, Episalla also serves on the board of TAG Treatment Action Group and the Gesso Foundation. In 2006, Episalla participated in Fenenin El-Rahhal (Nomadic Artists) International Artists Summit, Western Desert and Cairo, Egypt. She is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award and is represented by Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago and Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels where she will have a solo exhibition in 2011. She lives and works in New York City.