Opening: October 2, 6-9pm,
Exhibition: October 3-4, 12-6pm
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
26 Wooster Street New York, New York 10013 (Phone: 212-431-2609)
Cupid Ojala Elvis Embrace, 2014 India Ink on mylar, 14 x 17in.
Through lines, Cupid Ojala’s work, conjures new ways of seeing the masculine body through the lens of a trans man. Ojala draws bodies that go beyond the questions of what it is to be a man. Instead, he re-embodies cultural signs of gender, and either strips away the flesh altogether leaving traces of hair, or produces new body formations. In Hair Patterns, the body is outlined only by hair navigating the construction of male virility where some of the patterns overlap to create abstract, yet corporeal shapes. Conversely, in Gender Wilderness, the body is very present, but these playful and erotic characters have new bodies, extra limbs, genital heads, and penises for hands–even the forests they inhabit are bodies ready to be part of the sexual encounter. Through these different scenarios, Ojala offers impossible bodies that surpass essentialist perspectives and extend new forms of desire.
Based on the Gender Wilderness series, Ojala has published a coloring book in a limited edition of 100 copies. Born in 1977, Ojala grew up in a conservative Mormon family in rural Bumpass, Virginia. He transitioned from female to male in 2003 and now resides in Brooklyn, New York.
More information: https://www.leslielohman.org/calendar/exhibitions.html
