The Lens

Years ago, Cuban-born artist Juan-Si González traveled through Missouri and stumbled on a sign: “Burger King, Cuba, 3 Miles.” The ironic juxtaposition led him to investigate. He later found 16 small towns called Cuba in the United States, most founded around the time of the Spanish-American War. Born out of that surprising discovery, Looking for Cuba Inside is a multimedia installation that moves like a travel diary along the walls of the gallery. It is a montage of documentary images and an absurd chronicle, oscillating constantly between memory, reality, reportage, and fiction.

The... Continue reading Juan-Si González: Looking for Cuba Inside

Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen presents Afterwords, an exhibition of photographs with accompanying texts about their making. Over five decades ago, Minkkinen embarked on a personal quest to perfect a single concept: unmanipulated, nude self-portraits in communion and counterpoint with nature and urban settings. Minkkinen makes environmental portraits; however, his subject matter is always himself in dialogue with the environment. Curator: William Messer, Independent Curator Continue reading Afterwords: 50 Years in Words and Images by Arno Rafael Minkkinen

What Came Before is an open call exhibition where nascent artists in the Cincinnati area feature photographs that capture their origin stories. In examining what forces shape their personal development, selected photographers demonstrate the ebb and flow of cause and effect. Glimpses of the past provide insight into the present, illustrating the nebulous notion of “self,” which is constantly being constructed, deconstructed, and then reconstructed. What Came Before is designed to facilitate collaboration between young creatives in the Cincinnati area.

Curator: Sharee Allen, Adjunct Professor of Photography

Continue reading What Came Before

Artist and activist Felipe Rivas San Martín’s multimedia practice fuses artistic representation with technology. In 1999, homosexuality was decriminalized in the artist’s home country, Chile. Since this shift in legality, Rivas San Martín’s work explores the existence of sexual diversity, while being critical of the notion that certain sexualities are inherently “deviant.”

In the series A Non-Existent Queer Archive, Rivas San Martín employs artificial intelligence to generate photographs of homosexual couples, resulting in sepia-toned portraits. In the absence of a long-documented queer history within his culture, Rivas San Martín creates his own records, stories, and visual markers of pasts... Continue reading Spotlight: Felipe Rivas San Martín

In these underwater photographs by Tina Gutierrez, the beauty in the movement of dancers and their ability to adapt to an underwater environment can be directly attributed to their rigorous training and ballet culture. Unknown to most, dancers’ careers often end before they reach the age of 30. Authoritarian power structures, intensely competitive training and performing environments, and hypercritical, perfectionist attitudes contribute to the pressures dancers endure. While initially this can appear to facilitate success, it ultimately compromises the health of performers. 

Ballet is a ‘culture of risk’ that normalizes pain and injury, and... Continue reading Tina Gutierrez: Illumination