Collection of the Artist, Courtesy of Sargent’s Daughter
Focusing solely on work by queer artists, AMOCA brings queer narratives to the forefront of ceramics
BY BETH ANN GERSTEIN
Making in Between: Queer Clay, on view at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona through December 30, brings together work by artists doing intersectional work and exploring common themes of identity, culture, and community and centering queerness as an unapologetic presence.
Focusing solely on work by queer artists, AMOCA brings queer narratives to the forefront of ceramics and features works by historical artists, whose identities have remained largely unseen until recently, alongside contemporary makers. Among the 12 vibrant exhibiting artists in Queer Clay are Alex Anderson (b. 1990) and Sascha Brastoff (1918-1993).
Alex Anderson’s Boy with Pearl Necklace (2023) confronts Western notions of gender, identity, and social hierarchy by referencing Baroque forebears. Clearly drawing upon Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s iconic Girl with Pearl Earring (c.1665), Anderson’s “boy” wears similar visual markers to Vermeer’s girl: a blue turban, a white earring, and red lipstick.
However, Anderson presents a tongue-in-cheek, campy scene. In Anderson’s depiction, pearl coyly drips from the figure’s ear and mouth, and the figure wears a “pearl necklace” that furthers allusions to his recent sexual activities.
Anderson situates Boy with Pearl Necklace firmly in the 21st century; his figure’s winking emoji-eye emphasizes the ubiquity of electronic flirtation, while the fire emoji in the lower corner of the piece underscores how digital communication values not only self-expression but also requires validation. The artist calls on his own Japanese and Black ancestry to further confront expectations of identity and cultural perception in his work. Anderson’s cultural-sexual interpretations are explored in his sculptures Tell Your Boyfriend Not to Be Mad at Me (2018) and The Male Gays (2023), also on view in Queer Clay.
Outside of ceramics, Sascha Brastoff is known for creating the character “G.I. Miranda,” a kabuki-geisha-meets-drag act based on his idol Carmen Miranda, while in the Army Air Corps’ entertainment division. Winged Victory (1945), a full-length film featuring Brastoff impersonating Carmen Miranda, is on view alongside his ceramic pieces in Queer Clay.
Brastoff’s popular mid-20th-century ceramic works were produced in a small Quonset hut on Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles. His mid-century designs included horses, peacocks, and dancers. Ballet Dancer (1950) is a graceful and functional gold-luster bordered lidded tortilla server. Rat and Fish (c. 1956-1959), a green ceramic plate depicting a standing, angry-faced rat with his erect penis in the mouth of a short four-legged fish, is indicative of Brastoff’s lesser-known and only privately shared homo- and hetero-erotic works.
Queer Clay highlights work that explores explicit sexual content as well as coded imagery. This exhibition shows artists grappling with and exploring their queer identities while also reminding viewers how queerness defies easy categorization. This art is variously thoughtful, angry, sad, celebratory, generous, and evocative. As scholar Matthew Limb explains, “queerness challenges what is, and dreams of what can be.” The contemporary and historic pieces showcased in Queer Clay exemplify these challenges and dreams, reminding us why examining queer identity is so compelling and important.
For more info on the exhibition visit: www.amoca.org/current-exhibits/queer-clay
Beth Ann Gerstein is the Executive Director of the American Museum of Ceramic Art.
