The Chicago Therapy Collective is pleased to present Trans Art Is: Love & Liberation , an exhibition featuring 15 trans and gender non-conforming artists working in various mediums from photography to performance. Focusing on themes of love, sex and intimacy, the exhibition runs from February 14th to March 22nd, 2019 with it’s reception taking place on Valentines day.

Curated by artist Ken Folk , Love & Liberation underlies the spirit of the Chicago Therapy Collective’s Trans Art Is project by building platforms and creating space for Trans/GNC
individuals. Trans Art Is seeks to amplify these voices, making visible the realities and
existence of Trans/GNC artists, and in this case, those that relate to love, sex, and intimacy.
The exhibition features creative and transgressive works by CJ Run, Alex & Effe, Evan Fusco,
Leo Williams, Bun Stout, Jordyn Belli, Asha Adisa, Marius Dania, Alex Ziauddin, Jean
Sonderand, Pascale Jarvis, Malachi Lily, Alloiza Mari, Larisa Wade and Emily Morley.

“In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied
states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement,
depression, self-denial. …In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The
need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. “
– Audrey Lorde, Sister Outsider

Trans and non-gender conforming individuals are often a site for oppression and exploitation.
Historically treated through the ideology of a cis-straight patriarchy, trans bodies are reduced to
objects of fear or subjects of sexual objectification; often commodities of desire for the cis gaze,
to be owned or consumed but never one with agency or self-determination.
Sexual agency is a step towards empowerment, to be reclaimed by those who have an
embodied trans/GNC experience of what intimacy can be.

Love & Liberation is an exhibition that explores that power, the complications of agency and the
dimensions of sex, love and intimacy of Trans and Gender Non-Conforming individuals. The
works rely on sexual bodily autonomy through the self-determination of trans embodied
experience. Here, the erotic is not vilified but instead used as a ground for critical engagement
and celebration: captured moments of tender embraces, embroidered reclamations, and
unabashedly honest self-portraits.

About the Curator
Curator of Love & Liberation is artist Ken Folk. They are a nonbinary trans, queer, Haitian artist
from Texas who creates works about their existence as a Black, queer, nonbinary trans person
navigating chronic illness, gender, institutionalized racism, and what it means to make art as
survival- also romance.

About The Chicago Therapy Collective
The Chicago Therapy Collective mobilizes to create safe, just, and inclusive Chicago
neighborhoods for Transgender/Gender Non-Conforming (T/GNC) individuals and communities.
Their 2020 goal is to make Chicago trans inclusive and visible. As a proud Andersonville
nonprofit, the CTC is working to meet their mission of creating a more safe, just, and inclusive
Chicago starting right in their own backyard. The Chicago Therapy Collective extends a warm
invitation to their neighbors – residents, community groups, businesses, nonprofits, and more –
help meet their mission and increase the neighborhood’s and city’s T/GNC inclusivity.

Official Website

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Tags: Alex & Effe, Alex Ziauddin, Alloiza Mari, Andersonville Galleria, Andersonville trans CJ Run, Asha Adisa, Bun Stout, Evan Fusco, Jean Sonderand, Jordyn Belli, Larisa Wade and Emily Morley, Leo Williams, Malachi Lily, Marius Dania, Pascale Jarvis, Trans Art Is: LOVE & LIBERATION