Author Talk: Damage: Notes on a Queer Aesthetic

Writer and critic, Jonathan Alexander in conversation on his latest book, Damage: Notes on a Queer Aesthetic, blending cultural criticism and story telling to ask how to look at images marked by queer pain without turning that pain into shock or pretending it isn’t there. Alexander is joined in conversation by artists and scholars, elin o’Hara slavick, and Carlos Motta. Books will be for sale at the event, and available for signing.

Each chapter of Damage: Notes on a Queer Aesthetic opens with a scene of looking, and then moves to ideas that readers can use. An interlude asks how beauty persists amid harm. A closing "Aftermath" offers practical ways to stay with difficult images without going numb. The prose is precise and direct. The claims are careful. The aim is not to cure pain, but to help readers recognize it, live with it, and act in its wake.

Jonathan Alexander is Chancellor's Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine. Author of more than twenty books, he blends memoir and criticism in work often described as autotheory. His titles include Writing & Desire, Stroke Book (Fordham), and a trilogy--Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology; Bullied: The Story of an Abuse; and Dear Queer Self. Honors include a Lambda Literary finalist nod, a gold IPPY, an INDIES finalist citation, and the Lavender Rhetorics Award.

elin o’Hara slavick is an Artist-in-Residence at the University of California, Irvine. She was a Professor of Studio Art, Theory and Practice at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill from 1994 until 2021. Her interdisciplinary work critically explores war, memory, exposure, memorials, cartography, history, labor, feminism, the body, politics, and utopia/dystopia.

Carlos Motta is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic communities, challenging normative discourses through acts of self-representation. His work spans a variety of media, including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.

Banner image: Mark Morrisroe, Blow Both of Us, Gail Thacker and Me, Summer 1978, 1986 C-print, negative sandwich, 31 x 32 cm, The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur

Accesibility
Chairs with backs will be available. Located at 26 Wooster Street, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art strives to provide a welcoming environment to all visitors. Five external steps lead to our entrance doors: a wheelchair lift is available. All galleries are wheelchair-accessible, and a single-occupancy accessible restroom is located behind the visitor services desk: all restrooms are gender-neutral. Large print didactics are available. 

For questions or access requests, please email [email protected] with 1 week advance of your visit.