alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms from February 10 to April 6, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Fiona Yang
Camila Tapia-Guilliams’ Blue Bodied and Self-Sentry are meant to be viewed in conversation. Both are acrylic on paper, and short, bright blue organic forms wriggle their way across both pieces. Tapia-Guilliams invites you to compare the differences between the two: the differing color schemes, the use of negative space, the sparse representational forms. Then, the pieces guide you towards their accompanying artist statements—two short poems, also titled Blue Bodied and Self-Sentry respectively.
Poetry in accompaniment to art can serve to both contextualize and further complicate. Wall text is meant to clarify the meaning of a piece; when confronted with poetry instead, the viewer is forced to analyze two works of art at once. The average viewer likely has little experience in analyzing either. In a way, this works to the artist’s advantage. An artist statement can deflate a piece, a paltry translation of a visual work into flat, accessible terms. Matisse, despite his own eloquence, famously declared that “a painter ought to have his tongue cut out.” One solution to this frequent artist’s dilemma? A rejection of the institutionalized, formulaic artist statement. Jennifer Liese, in N+1 magazine, writes, “For everyone’s sake—artists and the people and institutions working to support them—it would be better to welcome sense and nonsense, coherence and paradox, philosophy, poetry, and maybe even a little more than a page, all of which might truly represent, rather than reduce, artists and their art.”
With Blue Bodied and Self-Sentry, we see Liese’s proclamation in action. The two poems are meditations on looking, being looked upon and loved. Neither poem attempts to reduce their respective works to thematic elements or try to explain its brushwork. Instead, the poems reference principles that underlie all of Tapia-Guilliams’s work: community-centered care, collaborative worldbuilding, solidarity and love. In Blue Bodied, Tapia-Guilliams writes, “Maybe then when we hold each other again / We won’t fall apart / We can build ourselves up / And start fresh”; in Self-Sentry, they write, “The low view has its beauty in the weeds.”
In other artist statements, Tapia-Guilliams explicitly references works by queer theorists and scholars. In the description of What is Theirs is Mine, they direct viewers to the writing of nonbinary artist and writer Alok V. Menon. In true collaborative fashion, Tapia-Guilliams is aware that their words alone won’t be enough to explain the history, theory, and insight behind their work. Instead, they invoke the support of the queer intellectual and artistic community that inspired it in the first place.
Poetry and theory: rather than flattening the work, Tapia-Guilliams enriches it. The result is a collection of pieces that mutually support and reinforce each other. Tapia-Guilliams is fiercely committed to solidarity and care, and that ideological conviction shines through in the show.
Camila Tapia-Guilliams’s work is included in alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms at the Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 10, 2022 to April 6, 2022.
Further reading: