Jade Yumang: Thumb Through

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Jade Yumang, "Thumb Through," nd

mixed media

Opening reception is on Friday October 27, 2017 at 8:00 pm 

Jade Yumang’s artistic practice focuses on the concept of queer form traced through the summoning of historical amnesia, by means of myths, scandal trials, obscenity laws, and filmic tropes. Thumb Through is a series of sculptures that reference a 1972 legal scandal in New Jersey where police officers, without warrant, entered a gay bookstore and seized publications that were deemed obscene. Each sculpture in the exhibition represents a page from an issue of My-O-My, a 1970s North American gay erotic magazine that was used as evidence in the case and compared to an unauthorized weapon. For Thumb Through, Yumang scanned and printed the issue on fabric page-by-page, combining them with contemporaneous materials to construct abstract sculptural forms that evoke the forthcoming visibility of queer desire.

Jade Yumang’s work primarily focuses on the concept of queer form through sculptural abstraction, installation, and performance. He received his MFA at Parsons School of Design with Departmental Honors in 2012 and his BFA Honors in University of British Columbia as the top graduate in 2008. He was born in Quezon City, Philippines, grew up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, immigrated to Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is currently a sessional instructor at the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. He is also part of a New York-based collaborative duo, Tatlo, with Sara Jimenez.

His works has been exhibited internationally, including, Brooklyn Museum, NY; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, NY; ONE Archives, Los Angeles, CA; International Print Center New York; Invisible-Exports, New York, NY; The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Equity Gallery, New York, NY; Box13 Artspace, Houston, TX; Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s, NL; The Kitchen, New York, NY; Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist, Jade Yumang.