Elle Pérez

Elle Pérez (born 1989, Bronx, NY) is an American photographer whose work explores gender identity, intimacy, vulnerability, and the relationship between seeing and love.[1][2] Pérez is a gender non-conforming[3] trans artist.[4]

In 2019, Pérez was featured in Cultured Magazine's 30 Under 35 and in Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30.[5][6] They are currently an Assistant Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.[7] They were formerly a visiting professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Williams College and Cooper Union, a critic at the Yale School of Art, and a dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.[6][8] Pérez is represented by 47 Canal and currently lives and works in New York City.[9][10]

Pérez's work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.[11]

Early life and education

Pérez is of Puerto Rican descent and grew up in The Bronx.[1] In 2002, at the age of twelve, Pérez began photographing the Bronx punk community that they were a part of, creating an archive of the people that shaped these peripheral, alternative, and genderqueer spaces.[4][12]

Pérez holds a BFA in Photography from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Photography from Yale School of Art. They attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.[4]

Work

In 2014 and 2015 Pérez photographed queer and punk spaces such as Euforia Latina, the name for latin night at Club Hippo in Baltimore, MD and Bronx Underground, a punk show at the First Lutheran Church of Throgs Neck, in the Bronx, both of which have since closed. Pérez;s photographs chronicle these spaces of queer liberation. In these nightclub photographs, "Pérez, working in settings of emotional familiarity, takes her subjects, their queerness, and their blackness and brownness for granted. By doing so, [they] recenter all LGBT individuals as normative, everyday, and utterly beautiful."[13]

While a graduate student at Yale in 2015 they began a series titled "Raw," photographs of the Black and Latino wrestlers of the Bronx underground wrestling scene. Pérez was interested in how wrestlers create personas to experiment with new identities, and specifically identities that may not be accessible to them in everyday life.[14] In an interview with The Fader about this series they state, "I think wrestling is important for people in my community who are denied certain types of identities and can’t be anyone they want in the “real” world. You can be anyone you want in the ring."[14][1]

As expressed in MoMA PS1's press release, on the occasion of the artist's first museum solo exhibition, Diablo, "Pérez's photographs distill moments of intimacy and emotional exchange: a bloody hand resting between parted legs; the scar gracing a bare chest; twinned rocks nestled against an outcropping; a friend's face grazed by sunlight."[9]

In Bloom (solo exhibition at 47 Canal, 2018)

This exhibition comprised nine photographs and marked a departure from earlier images documenting queer public spaces to the artist's own private and intimate spaces, including the apartment of the artist's partner, Ian.[4] The pictures in this show contain "codes of desire"[4] legible to L.G.B.T.Q communities, but obscure to outsiders.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions
  • 2018 - In Bloom, 47 Canal.[10]
  • 2018 - Diablo, MoMA PS1[9]

Selected group exhibitions

References
  1. "At MoMA PS1, Photographer Elle Pérez Finds Depth in the Everyday". www.villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  2. "Fearless Bodies and Identities in Elle Pérez' Photography". C& AMÉRICA LATINA. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  3. "ELLE PÉREZ". Flaunt Magazine. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  4. Siemsen, Thora (2018-04-05). "Elle Pérez's Poetic, Visceral Bodies". ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  5. "Artist Elle Perez's Banner Year Is a Sign of Things to Come". Cultured Magazine. 2018-11-29. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  6. "Elle Pérez". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  7. "Elle Pérez". ves.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  8. "Yale University School of Art: Elle P Rez". art.yale.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  9. "Elle Pérez: Diablo". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  10. "47 Canal - Artists". 47canal.us. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  11. "Whitney Biennial 2019". whitney.org. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  12. "KALEIDOSCOPE – Elle Perez". Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  13. Tillet, Salamishah (2016-12-01). "In Nightclubs from the Bronx to Baltimore, Havens of Queer Liberation". Aperture Foundation NY. Retrieved 2019-04-11.
  14. "Elle Perez's Breathtaking Photos Of Underground Wrestlers In The Bronx". The FADER. Retrieved 2019-04-11.
  15. "Brooklyn Museum: Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  16. 525 & 533 West 19th Street New York. "This Is Not a Prop". David Zwirner. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  17. "Yossi Milo Gallery | INTIMACY". yossimilo.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  18. "ltd los angeles". ltdlosangeles.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
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