A Very Queer Thing

a group exhibition curated by Jessi DiTillio

December 2 - 17, 2023

"A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties."

—Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities"

Okay, obviously Karl Marx didn't mean a commodity was a very queer thing in that way, but words change, right? And often those changes have a certain kind of prescient magic. Marx introduced us to the idea that commodities take on a kind of cultish, spiritual magic by their very association with human effort and social relations. Per Karl, material objects' sense of value, as commodities, comes not from anything inherent to their physical properties but to the ways they move between us, connect us and separate us, through the invisible relations between us they manifest. 

This exhibition is interested in commodity fetishism in a sideways sense from Marx's meaning, a tender rotational pivot from economic theory to a queer erotics of objects. A Very Queer Thing presents eighteen artists from across North America who make objects as loci of human interaction and intimacy, objects that shape and are shaped by bodies, and of course, very queer things. 

ARTISTS INCLUDED:

Tommy Bruce

Ron Buffington

Ashley Campbell

Chelsea Couch

Lindsy Davis

Michael Espinoza

Annie May Johnston

Lara Kim

Chris Lael Larson

Haley Lauw

Marne Lucas

Nico McGiffin

Aaron Morgan

Arta Powers

Kate Rusek

Jesse Satterfield

Samuel Wildman

Bea Willemsen

ABOUT THE CURATOR

This exhibition is curated by Jessi DiTillio, PhD.

Jessi DiTillio is a curator, writer, and art historian based in Los Angeles. Currently she is Project Manager for Exhibitions and Publications at the Hammer Museum. She researches modern and contemporary American Art with a focus on parody, affect theory, race, gender and sexuality, and contemporary art engaging the politics of difference. She earned her PhD in the Department of Art + Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a co-founding member of Neon Queen Collective and Thunderstruck Collective. She was a 2019-2020 Luce/ACLS American Art Dissertation Fellow and has held curatorial fellowships at the Visual Arts Center at UT Austin, the Art Galleries at Black Studies, and The Contemporary Austin. She also served as Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Interim Director of the Association for Academic Museums and Galleries.