ExhibitionFebruary 12, 2021
Laura Aguilar at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell is the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar (b. 1959, San Gabriel, CA; d. 2018, Long Beach, CA), assembling more than 70 works produced over three decades. The exhibition will be on view between February 6 and May 9, 2021. Aguilar’s retrospective, which debuted in 2017 at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California, as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, traveled to Frost Art Museum in Miami and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
Aguilar’s photographs and videos are frequently political and personal, creating a feminist dialogue as a queer woman questioning the beauty stereotypes and the politically and socially acceptable. Aguilar portrayed herself, her friends and family, and LGBTQ+ and Latinx communities. After debuting with her show in 2017, Aguilar became a crucial figure in the Chicanx and queer art scenes of Los Angeles. She challenged how we perceive identity today through photographs as Aguilar delved into her ethnicity and sexuality and the impediments she felt to fit into society. Photography and video became her way of communication as she struggled with auditory dyslexia, creating a new language through her body to raise a voice for the diverse and marginalized.
Throughout the exhibition, it is possible to examine central themes and creative processes Aguilar undertook from the 1980s through her latest series produced in 2007. From her early photography of portraits of friends and other artists within the Chicana/o art community, Aguilar moved to nude self-portraits to addressing her lesbian identity and political activism within Los Angeles’s LGBTQ+ community. Aguilar’s later series are more introspective and spiritual, her nude self-portraiture in nature.
Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell is organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum in collaboration with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and is guest curated by Sybil Venegas, Independent Art Historian and Curator and Professor Emerita of Chicana/o Studies at East Los Angeles College.
Aguilar’s photographs and videos are frequently political and personal, creating a feminist dialogue as a queer woman questioning the beauty stereotypes and the politically and socially acceptable. Aguilar portrayed herself, her friends and family, and LGBTQ+ and Latinx communities. After debuting with her show in 2017, Aguilar became a crucial figure in the Chicanx and queer art scenes of Los Angeles. She challenged how we perceive identity today through photographs as Aguilar delved into her ethnicity and sexuality and the impediments she felt to fit into society. Photography and video became her way of communication as she struggled with auditory dyslexia, creating a new language through her body to raise a voice for the diverse and marginalized.
Throughout the exhibition, it is possible to examine central themes and creative processes Aguilar undertook from the 1980s through her latest series produced in 2007. From her early photography of portraits of friends and other artists within the Chicana/o art community, Aguilar moved to nude self-portraits to addressing her lesbian identity and political activism within Los Angeles’s LGBTQ+ community. Aguilar’s later series are more introspective and spiritual, her nude self-portraiture in nature.
Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell is organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum in collaboration with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and is guest curated by Sybil Venegas, Independent Art Historian and Curator and Professor Emerita of Chicana/o Studies at East Los Angeles College.
Gallery
