BOX 13 artists Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin are showing an exhibition of their work at Devin Borden Gallery in Houston, entitled Where the Ranch Actually Was.
The show is one of a series of distinct installations, one for each American state, in response to recently uncovered and not well-known nineteenth century lesbian and gay historical figures, events and cultural artifacts.
The exhibition includes a series of maps overlaid with images of what now stands at the site of historic LGBT bars and nightclubs across the state of Texas. These elaborately hand-cut road maps evoke cardiovascular systems and provide frameworks connecting geography to lost histories which created them.
The exhibition also includes sculptural remnants of performance actions in which the artists read aloud into inflatable bags, capturing their breath as a physical abstraction of the words they are reciting. They are creating breath abstractions of the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court decision making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory, and the little-known 1895 novel Norma Trist; or, Pure Carbon: A Story of The Inversion of the Sexes. Written in La Grange, Texas by a medical doctor and published in Austin, Norma Trist features astonishingly progressive views and an unabashed lesbian protagonist.
Several performances will occur during the run of the exhibition including a recitation from this novel during the artists’ reception.
The exhibition runs from February 26, 2016 – April 30, 2016 at Devin Borden gallery.