Date/Time
Date(s) - 22nd Aug 2024
5:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Location
TOM House

Categories

• Foundation Events

Please join Tom of Finland Foundation in celebrating the final presentation of two artists-in-residence.

Yun-Pei and Gray Wielebinski have teamed up for an evening at historic TOM House to showcase what they have achieved during their respective residencies. Banana Republic/Fratricide will consist of performances, screenings and visual work. Pei and Gray will come together and have an artist talk to discuss their time spent as artists-in-residence as well as the art they have created, alongside readings by Luis Ortega Govela, Harry Taffy, Asa Seresin and Ana Howe Bukowski.

Zines and T-shirts will be available for sale. Drinks for the evening are generously provided by Loncaro. 

“The term ‘banana’ serves as a metaphor for Asian immigrants, encompassing issues of Asian identity, cultural domination, and shifts in self-colonization and identity consciousness. Banana Republic, a term that carries a derogatory connotation, refers to underdeveloped countries whose economies are primarily based on agriculture and are controlled and dominated by more powerful capitalist nations, such as the United States.

By engaging in both painting and in-depth interviews with Queer Asian Americans, I aim to highlight the bodies and gazes of Asian Queers, particularly in the context of their survival or resistance within the hyper-masculine atmosphere of Western society. This raises questions about whether they conform, surrender, modify themselves, or fight for their own voice.” – Yun-Pei

“Titled Fratricide, the event draws on recent work I have been making around fraternity house architecture, ritual, homoeroticism, and hazing and the broader realm of homosocial spaces and subcultural ‘secret’ or ‘semi-secret’ communities. I want to play with the idea of TOM House as a pseudo-frat house, bringing people into the space that may traditionally be excluded both from actual frat houses and the boundaries of Gay male identity. As the name suggests, I’m imagining it as both a form of fantasy, revenge, and imitation, in the tradition of Queer mimicry.” – Gray Wielebinski

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