Since 2014, Houston has been host to a citywide takeover. For one week in April, the city itself is activated as a site for art, creativity, social consciousness, and dialogue as the CounterCurrent festival and its artists spread throughout the inner loop to hold a series of provocative performances....
For artists Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin, putting up plaques and statues or writing books are still absolutely necessary, but still they see many opportunities to let queer folk “be super queer in how they honor and preserve these histories.”...
Photography, as with many aspects of Western culture, comes loaded with a eurocentric canon that shapes the everyday perspective and expectations of the field....
Boone, gearing up for his solo exhibition at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Highway Hex (Nov. 9-Feb. 17), has concocted a body of work inspired in its way by both Leatherface and Stanley Kubrick....
In late June of 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a prominent gay bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. This raid sparked a series of demonstrations by an outraged, oppressed community, often referred to as the Stonewall Riots or Stonewall Uprising, that are seen as the precursor to the Gay liberation movement and the continued fight for LGBT rights. ...
In 1971, artist Chris Burden vanished for three days. No one knew where he had gone, and for those three days the artist questioned his own existence and what his disappearance meant....
“There are associations that come with the use of a sarape, especially now with recent political and economic border issues,” says Adrian Esparza, referring to the brightly colored, blanket-like shawls from Latin America that inform and compose much of his work as well as the constant issue of the Mexican-American border, in which Texas is often found at the center....
Up-cycled dresses on mannequins, paintings of deconstructed tracksuits, and massive lengths of cloth made with consumer technology fill the upstairs of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. ...
The story of Nicolas Moufarrege is a sad one. Lost to the AIDS crisis in New York City at the age of 36, the artist had only been in practice for a decade and undoubtedly had much left to produce. Curated by Dean Daderko and on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through Feb. 17, 2019, Nicolas Moufarrege: Recognize My Sign is the first solo museum exhibition for Moufarrege....
Michael McFadden is a Houston-based writer and arts administrator. He holds an MA in Arts Leadership from the University of Houston's College of the Arts and has worked extensively with the Houston arts community. Learn more about him at pugintheair.com.
