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For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability Film Series
On view at MCASD
October 17, 2024 to February 2, 2025
The exhibition For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability surveys themes of illness and disability in American art from the 1960s up to the COVID-19 era. For Dear Life continues on floor –3 in the Film and Video Gallery in Copley Gallery with a rotating series of films and videos that extend the exhibition’s key themes.
Schedule
October 17, 2024 – November 3, 2024
- Moyra Davey
Canada, born 1958
Les Goddesses, 2011.
Color video with sound, 61 min.
Courtesy of the artist, greengrassi, London; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York.
© Moyra Davey
November 7, 2024 – November 24, 2024
Anna Halprin
United States, 1920–2021
Circle the Earth, 1986
Film by Coni Beeson
16 mm film, digitized, sound, color, 24 min.
The Elyse Eng Dance Collection / Museum of Performance + Design
-
Angela Ellsworth, Untied States, born 1964
TT Takemoto, United States, born 1967
Imag(in)ed Malady, 1997
Dir. TT Takemoto
single channel digital video, 6:30 min.
Courtesy of the artists.
November 28, 2024 – December 15, 2024
- Milford Graves
United States, 1941–2021
Heartbeat Drummer, 2004. Reuters, color video, 4:19 minutes. Courtesy of the Estate of Milford Graves and Fridman Gallery.
LabVIEW animation, c. 2014-2020
LabView software screen captures, 4:21 minutes.
Courtesy of the Estate of Milford Graves and Fridman Gallery.
LabVIEW animation, c. 2014-2020.
LabView software screen captures, 2:53 minutes.
Courtesy of the Estate of Milford Graves and Fridman Gallery.
LabVIEW animation, c. 2014-2020.
LabView software screen captures, 4:32 minutes.
Courtesy of the Estate of Milford Graves and Fridman Gallery.
December 19, 2024 – January 5, 2025
-
Gregg Bordowitz
United States, born 1964
Fast Trip, Long Drop, 1993.
video, color, stereo, 54:04 min.
Courtesy of Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
© Gregg Bordowitz.
January 9, 2025 – February 2, 2025
- P. Staff
United Kingdom, born 1987
Weed Killer, 2017.
video, color, sound, 16:49 min.
Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth & Council
© P. Staff, 2017
Content note: Some videos contain mature content, including images and language related to suicidal ideation, substance use, and sexuality. Please use discretion.
Sensory note: Some videos may contain flashes of moving lights and loud sounds that may trigger photosensitivity or audio sensitivity.
About the exhibition
For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability is the first exhibition to survey themes of illness and disability in American art from the 1960s up to the COVID-19 era. Identifying the vulnerable body as a throughline for art in the United States in recent decades, the exhibition focuses on the ways health issues intervene in life and in art, transforming artists’ processes, subject matter, and politics. Informed by intersecting social movements that include civil rights, antiwar, women’s and gay liberation, and disability rights, artists have approached the body—in all its variance—as a field of inquiry.
Featuring an intergenerational group of eighty artists, the exhibition includes work by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Yvonne Rainer, Howardena Pindell, and David Hockney, among others, to more recent contributions by artists such as Christine Sun Kim, Simone Leigh, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Park McArthur. Considering disability through a broad lens, For Dear Life suggests affinities between those living with a range of maladies and conditions, recognizing that all of us experience illness and disability throughout our lives.
About PST ART
Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 60 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art
Funders
For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability is organized by MCASD Senior Curator Jill Dawsey, PhD, and former Associate Curator Isabel Casso.
For Dear Life is a part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, an initiative of Getty. The landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art.
For Dear Life and its publication have been made possible with lead support from Getty. The project has also received major support from the Henry Luce Foundation. Generous individual exhibition underwriting provided by Rebecca Moores with additional funding from Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese. Funding for the catalog comes from the support of Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McKneely and The KHR McNeely Family Fund. Additional support is provided by the City of San Diego through the Commission for Arts and Culture.
Related Exhibitions
Top: Moyra Davey, Still from "Les Goddesses," 2011. Courtesy the artist, greengrassi, London; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York.© Moyra Davey.