AXIS MUNDO

Curated by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz

Laura Aguilar, Jerri Allyn, Carlos Almaraz, Skot Armstrong, David Arnoff, Steven Arnold, Asco, Judith F. Baca, Alice Bag, Tosh Carrillo, Monte Cazazza, Edward Colver, Vaginal Davis, DIVA TV, Jerry Dreva, Tomata du Plenty, Elsa Flores, Anthony Friedkin, Harry Gamboa Jr., Roberto Gil de Montes, Gronk, Jef Huereque, Louis Jacinto, Ray Johnson, Robert Lambert, Robert Legorreta (Cyclona), Les Petites Bonbons, Mundo Meza (with Simon Doonan), Judy Miranda, Ray Navarro (with Zoe Leonard), Nervous Gender, Graciela Gutiérrez Marx and Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Richard Nieblas, Dámaso Ogaz, Pauline Oliveros (with Alison Knowles), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Ferrara Brain Pan, Clemente Padín, Phranc, Ruby Ray, Albert Sanchez, Teddy Sandoval, Joey Terrill, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Patssi Valdez, Ricardo Valverde, Jack Vargas, Gerardo Velázquez, Johanna Went (with Scott Lindgren), and Faith Wilding

Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. is the first exhibition of its kind to excavate histories of experimental art practice, collaboration, and exchange among over 50 Los Angeles-based queer Chicanx artists between the late 1960s and early ‘90s. It reveals extensive new research into the collaborative networks that connected these artists to one another in and beyond Los Angeles, and to artists from many different communities, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, and international urban centers, thus deepening and expanding narratives about the development of the Chicano Art Movement, performance art, and queer aesthetics and practices. Axis Mundo marks the first historical consideration and significant showing of many of these pioneering artists’ work. It presents their work—painting, performance ephemera, print material, video, music, fashion, and photography—in the context of significant artistic and cultural movements: mail art and artist correspondences; the rise of Chicanx, LGBTQ, and feminist print media; the formation of alternative spaces; fashion culture; punk music and performance; and artistic responses to the AIDS crisis.

PUBLICATION Edited by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz with Macarena Gómez- Barris. Texts by Julia BryanWilson, Iván A. Ramos, and more. Co-Published by DelMonico Books/ Prestel and ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, 2017.

CURATORS C. Ondine Chavoya is Professor of Art History and Latina/o Studies at Williams College. David Evans Frantz is an independent curator based in Los Angeles.

For information contact Becky Nahom at becky@curatorsintl.org or call 212 254 8200.

Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. was organized by ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the traveling exhibition and tour are organized by ICI. Additional support is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Calamus Foundation of New York, Inc., the City of West Hollywood through WeHo Arts, Kathleen Garfield, the ONE Archives Foundation, the USC Libraries, and the Luis Balmaseda Fund for Gay & Lesbian Archives.

Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., installation view, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, 2019. Photo by Jim Gipe / Pivot Media. Courtesy of WCMA and ICI.

Patssi Valdez, Reclining (Betty Salas and Gloria), c. early 1980s. Black-and-white photograph, 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4 cm). Courtesy of Patssi Valdez.