Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Soufiane Ababri’s desire to construct a historical family and a genealogy of queer kinships in Bedwork / Yes I AM sees him conjuring up a pantheon of gay writers and artists whose intellect has changed the course of human history and development, despite their outsider status. Figures as disparate as Michel Foucault, Glenn Ligon, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet, and André Gide populate Ababri’s drawing series in the artist’s signature naïf style, their homosexuality the thread that connects them. The series of over forty drawings are part of Bedwork, a larger project that Ababri began in 2015.

Photography (Photography)

On New Year’s Eve in 1965, Lisette Carmi met and photographed a group of transgender people living and working on the Via del Campo in Genoa–the main street for prostitution in the city, located in the former Jewish ghetto. This encounter was the beginning of a seven year relationship with the group, and led to the publication of I Travestiti (1972), a controversial book that comprised all of the images Carmi took of the group between 1965-1971. Forming close friendships with the people she portrayed, the artist rented an attic near Via del Campo in Genoa to live with them, she captured the everyday lives of the group, depicting sex work from a new perspective.