Queer and Trans Abstractions in Contemporary Art

Tuesday, March 5, 2024, 12:15 - 1:50pm

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Lancaster

While representation is historically central to queer and trans politics, abstraction has become a major tactic of queer and trans art practices that undermine easy legibility in favor of formal and material experimentation. Lex Lancaster’s recent book, Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2022), investigates this phenomenon by forging a formalist and materialist approach to take abstraction seriously as queer, trans, anti-racist, and "crip" processes rather than a style or appearance. In this talk, Lancaster, who is assistant professor of art history, also considers trans tactics of materiality in sculptures and installations that destabilize normative ontological processes and perceptions by working with the everyday material forces that shape individual and collective bodies. 

The talk will be held in The Center for Writing and Learning in the library.

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  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.