Queer Art: "Behind this Mask"

Join me at this free talk at Contemporary Art Museum, featuring some VERY special guests....

This day-long celebration of the exhibition And I Saw New Heavens and a New Earth: The Partnership, Art, and Activism of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore explores the sustained resonance of Cahun and Moore’s personal, creative, and activist partnership. The program’s title comes from a line in Cahun’s 1930 surrealist autobiography Aveux non Avenus (“Disavowed Confessions”): “Behind this mask is another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.” In this spirit, join a lineup of artists and writers in celebrating the ways Cahun and Moore used language, visual art, and personal expression to explore self-presentation.

The celebration builds on a morning Play Date that explores the theme “My Many Selves” with mask-making and an all-ages performance.

The afternoon will begin with a poem by writer Elizabeth Hoover and live excerpts of new artistic works addressing Cahun and Moore’s life. Next, actor, writer, director, and singer John Cameron Mitchell will share his interest in Cahun and Moore, as well as read excerpts from his forthcoming play inspired by their lives, LSM.

The day concludes with a conversation between writer, educator, and art historian Jennifer Shaw and exhibition co-curators Dean Daderko and Svetlana Kitto, along with Hoover and Mitchell.

Learn more about the speakers on the event page here.

Registration with CAMSTL is encouraged; click here to sign up.