Jungle Pussy curated by Yeni Mao

Frank Moore, Jacques and Tyrone, 1997, oil on canvas, 45” x 62”, Courtesy of the Estate of Frank Moore

Each month, Visual AIDS invites guest curators, drawn from both the arts and AIDS communities, to select several works from the Frank Moore Archive Project. This month, Yeni Mao curated the online web gallery Jungle Pussy, featuring the artwork of Bob Corti, Jimmy De Sana, James Fackrell, Enrico Filippi, Jerry Hooten, Elliott Linwood, Gregory Maskwa, Frank Moore, Hunter Reynolds, Eric Rhein, Richard Treitner, Gregory Veney, and Frederick Weston.

Curator's Statement: Flipping through the archives at Visual AIDS, I'm well aware that they represent a subgroup of artists within a culture based on sexuality, and don't want to lose sight of the fact (or "and don't want to forget") that all the archive artists are HIV positive. We lost almost an entire generation to AIDS.  I wonder what the contemporary art landscape would be like today if Jimmy DeSana, Martin Wong, Felix Gonzalez-Torrez, Paul Thek, Keith Haring and the many other Mothers were still here.  With the accelerated generations of the art world, this is a major skip. The skip sharpened the already acute relationship gay men have with their own physicality and reflected physical images.  (read more)

About the Curator:
Yeni Mao was born in Guelph, Canada, and is based in New York City. He holds a BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, and apprenticed in bronze casting at Artworks Foundry in Berkeley, Calif. Mao's work has been shown nationally and internationally, at Collette Blanchard Gallery, Jon Tomlinson Enterprises, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Rush Arts, Chashama, La MaMa Galleria and ISE Cultural Center in NYC, Shang Element Contemporary Art Museum in Beijing, Ardell Gallery in Bangkok, and Galleria Metropolitana in Santiago. In 2007 Mao was artist-in-residence at The Lijiang Studio in Yunnan and The Red Gate Gallery in Beijing. This summer he will be artist-in-residence at the Fountainhead Residency.

View WEB GALLERY here*
*web gallery may contain adult content