E21:
A DIFFERENT
HORIZON ATLAS: Collaboratively Mapping Queer Utopias
JUNE 1- JULY 13, 2024
Featured Artists:
Clay Scofield, Lin Hoerner, MC Coble, Niki Afsar, Lane Timothy Speidel
Lead Mentor: Jaimes Mayhew
VISIONARY LEADERS CIRCLE PREVIEW: Friday, May 31, 2023 | 5 - 7 PM
OPENING RECEPTION & ARTIST TALK: Sat. June 1, 1 - 2 PM
SEE BELOW FOR ALL PROGRAMMING DETAILS!
For this 21st year of Transformer’s annual Exercises for Emerging Artists, Transformer is expanding the program to include a dynamic cohort of nationally and internationally based queer and trans artists. This year’s artistic discipline focus & theme will be building queer utopias through digital and physical processes - an extension of A Different Horizon Atlas, a project created by artist Jaimes Mayhew in collaboration with a variety of different individuals and communities. Throughout the course of the mentorship sessions, participating artists, Clay Sconfield (Indiana), Lin Hoerner (Vermont), MC Coble (Sweden), Niki Asfar (Maryland), and Lane Timonthy Speidel (Philadelphia) will each create a map art piece to be presented as part of a summer exhibition at Transformer. The culminating exhibition, A Different Horizon Atlas, will run June 1 through July 13, 2024, with special events planned around Capital Pride.
EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING
All programs are free & open to the public
Opening day of A Different Horizon Atlas Artist Talk
June 1, 2024 | 1-2PM
with Lead Mentor Jaimes Mayhew and Transformer’s Founder & Director, Victoria Reis.
Pride Parade Art Build with Jaimes Mayhew
June 4, 2024 | 4-7PM
Join Jaimes Mayhew in creating posters, costumes, and more to bring to the Capital Pride Parade, and rock all month long. Poster making materials provided while supplies last. RSVP BELOW!
Zoom Artist Talk with all Participating Artists
June 18, 2024| 5-7PM
Join Jaimes Mayhew and the E21cohort to hear more about each artist, their map, and the inspiration behind it.
Zoom Panel on Queer Speculation with Jaimes Mayhew, Alexis Lothian, and Kalima Young
July 2, 2024 | 5PM
Join us for a conversation about queer speculation, queer histories and the possibilities of that speculation creates with Dr. Alexis Lothian, Associate Professor at University of Maryland and author of Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility and Dr. Kalima Young, Assistant Professor at Towson University, author of Mediated Misogynoir: The Erasure of Black Women and Girls’ Pain the Public Imagination, and A Different Horizon Atlas collaborator.
E21 PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
LEAD MENTOR: JAIMES MAYHEW (he/they)
Jaimes Mayhew is a transgender artist who makes participatory, interdisciplinary work that addresses queer identities and how they are expressed through land use, speculation and ecology. From installation, photography and video to fiber art and performance, Mayhew’s work is conceptually tied together through experimentations of queering relationships between humans, places and things.
Jaimes’ work has been shown nationally and internationally. He has received grants and fellowships from The Fulbright Commission of Iceland, Maryland State Arts Council, Rubys Artist Grants, and The Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund, among others.
Niki Asfar (she/they)
Niki Afsar is a nonbinary/femme, iranian-american interdisciplinary artist living and working in the Washington DC area. Born in Los Angeles to Tehran-born parents and learning to speak Farsi in their mid-20s, their work explores expressions of fluidity and longing within language, hybrid/myriad identities, and mental health. Drawing influences from personal, familial, and cultural histories steeped in poetry and paradox, they experiment with a number of mediums including devised movement and performance; poetry and text; live singing and sound making; and mirror work. They are currently an artist at Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, MD, have performed at Rhizome DC and the Pie Shop DC, and were a 2023 Wherewithal Grantee.
MC Coble (they/them)
MC Coble (they/them) seeks to make visible the hidden/ignored histories and contemporary urgencies of marginalized communities, informed in part, by their own experiences as a non-binary trans* artist, activist and educator. Photography, performance art, video and recently drawing form a material foundation for their critical and intersectional approach to thinking along with queer & trans* feminist politics, investigating the power of play and the potential of failure as methods. Often working site-specifically, research-based and collectively are integral to Coble’s ways of working. Coble’s artistic activities not only involve creating performances and other art works, but also leading and engaging in workshops, making publications, and community organizing.
Coble has recently published the book Things Change Anyway (in collaboration with their partner, art historian Louise Wolthers), which won the Swedish Photobook Prize 2024. Through photos, drawing and text, it imagines metamorphosis such as non-binary gender affirmations, menopause and aging as well has non-human connectivity and queer kinship. Coble has a Master of Fine Art from The George Washington University, where they also taught many years; they have also worked as a Professor at Funen Art Academy (Odense, Denmark) and Senior Lecturer at HDK-Valand (Gothenburg University, Sweden).
Coble lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden and currently has two year working grant from the Swedish Arts Council
Lin Hoerner (she/they)
As a synesthetic artist and queer woman based out of Burlington, Vermont, my perspective and experience within the world are shaped by a blending of my senses, oftentimes with music, concept, and language merging with my growing understanding of my personal identity. Bold color, unique concept, and chaotic rhythm are represented within my work and are drawn from experiences within my own life. An observation often expands into an artistic idea, which I in turn strive to share with those who are creatively curious. My synesthesia and my daily perspectives are my largest inspirations, and I seek to capture this unique experience within my artwork, not only as an art form, but as a language with which to provide a window into my mind.
E Clayton Scofield (they/them)
E Clayton Scofield is an artist and poet adhering to a nonphilosophy of play, an experiment of self-making that invites intimacy through immersive states where the self may dissolve. Inspired by their experience in a trans body, they use their body as conduit across media, transforming ideas through form to reveal unexpected meaning. Their projects contain many iterations, including video, performance and poetry, that culminate as bodies of work. Their work has been featured in publications including Number, Nashville Arts, Wussy, and Dinner Bell. They have performed and exhibited nationally and been an artist-in-residence with Cucalorus, the School of Making Thinking, Lazuli, and the JHU-MICA Film Centre. They received MFAs from Indiana University, Bloomington, in digital art, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in poetry, and a BA from Vanderbilt University. They are on the board of directors of the School of Making Thinking.
Lane Speidel (they/them)
Lane Timothy Speidel is a Philadelphia-based artist, curator, member of Vox Populi Gallery, and graduate of Tyler School of Art. They play with writing, sculpture, fiber, music, and painting to try to place themselves in the world. These different methods patchwork in freaky, funny, and sad installations, with seams visible. They are a white Jewish transexual disabled fag. They can’t sleep or are sleeping too much. They create sculptures and clothing from trash by necessity but also aesthetic interest. Their writing practice began as love songs to friends, and now it's poetry, music, plays, and sci-fi. Lane has been an artist in residence at Flux Factory and TPAIR. They have self-published many zines, and now a collection of short stories “ALL EXITS”. Their writing has been in Ginger Zine, Stone Fruit, Art Blog, Gay Wicked Ways, and Title Magazine. Their artwork has been shown at Vox Populi Gallery, Space 1026, Unrequited Leisure, Flux Factory, Changes Gallery, and the National Liberty Museum. They know that our job is to upend all systems that do not make possible joy, family, community, and celebration. They use their artwork to look out of the keyhole of our locked capitalist reality, one hand always feeling for the key.