Joseph Liatela

Bio: Joseph Liatela is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Using performance, sculpture and video, he makes work that examines issues of biopolitics, memorial, trans and queer subjectivities, embodiment, institutional power and collective movement.

He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Leslie-Lohman Museum Journal, SFMoMA Open Space, and Artsy, among others. He has received fellowships and awards from the Zellerbach Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, Denniston Hill, California College of the Arts, Banff Centre, Artist Grant and Columbia University. He is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University.

www.josephliatela.com
Instagram: @josephliatela

Thesis Exhibition

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VA_ART_LIATELA_JOSEPH_At The Speed of Falling.jpg

VA_ART_LIATELA_JOSEPH_To Move Is to Remember_DETAIL A.jpg

VA_ART_LIATELA_JOSEPH_To Move Is to Remember_DETAIL B.jpg

VA_ART_LIATELA_JOSEPH_Untitled (for PUSLE) II.jpg

Artist Statement: Our bodies are ours, yet they are not solely our own as they are the medium for our interfacing with the world. As a transgender person, I see the limitations of embodiment, projection and legibility as rife with potential. These elements inform my practice where I question institutional, cultural and medico-legal ideas of what is considered a “complete” or “correct” bodily formation.

My background in printmaking fostered an interest in how the manipulation of a surface— such as scars on skin or embossing on paper— alters how it is perceived, and has informed my approach to creating politically grounded, relational work. Using sculpture, performance, installation and video, I aim to differentiate between the physiological elements of having a body, and the social meaning the body takes on in the context of lived experience. In doing so, my work examines the performative nature of identity, demonstrating how it is perceived and enacted at the level of the body.

In my latest work, I have been investigating the material overlaps between grief and celebration, as well as how bodies hold and repurpose history. A gesture can reach across empires and decades. The dancefloor can be a place to move again with the ghosts of friends lost to AIDS, or to pay pilgrimage to queer and trans ancestors. Using the materials of memorial, such as flowers, gesture or the empty dance floor, I orchestrate absence as a way to explore the more expansive modes of knowing and being that these spaces of longing allow.

L to R: To Move Is To Remember (16" x 72" x 48", 49 stargazer lilies, aluminum, granite, leds, mdf, acrylic, necklace chain, soundtrack with recordings from dance floors in New York City, tranducers, time, 2021, Soundtrack by Anthony Sertel Dean); At The Speed of Falling (44" x 52" x 33", Aluminum, 2022); Untitled (for PULSE) II (16" x 12", Lily pollen and pigment on granite, 2021)