San José Museum of Art Assistant Curator Juan Omar Rodriguez will forge an intergenerational and transnational network of artists, curators, and scholars to explore the intersections of cultural production and queer politics in contemporary art, from the West Coast to Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Using cruising as a point of departure, this research project will examine interrelated questions of visibility and perception, architecture, public space, non-normative desire, nationalism, imperialism, globalization, migration, diaspora, and power. Inspired by Jack Parlett’s conceptualization of cruising as a perceptual arena where acts of looking are intensified and eroticized, this research will examine the incipient moments of cruising, where the fate of desiring queerly—whether it is expressed, whether it will be fulfilled—is contingent on a variety of factors, including the underexamined impacts of race, class, caste, and citizenship. This project will enrich visual arts discourses and queer political imaginaries and will also provide a platform and cohort to artists who are otherwise underrecognized in national and global contemporary art circuits.
Juan Omar Rodriquez
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“The Warhol Foundation aims to support the full range of artistic activity in America—from exhibitions at major museums to neighborhood projects by artist collectives. Arts writers, through the range and specialization of their individual interests, touch upon all of this activity—illuminating and interrogating it and bringing it into conversation with the public. Support for artists is not complete without support for the circulation and serious consideration of their ideas. The Arts Writers Grant program keeps artists at the center of cultural dialogue and debate—in our opinion, right where they belong.”
Joel Wachs, President