“ Chez Cléo” will be viewable March 7, 8, and 9 in the OCADU Graduate Gallery, 1st Floor.
Films on view:
“Journeé International de la Transsexualité” by Mirha Soleil Ross
“Happy Birthday, Marsha!” by Tourmaline & Sasha Wortzel
Enter OCADU Graduate Gallery via the main entrance at 205 Richmond St West, using either elevator or stairs to access the 1st Floor. There will be exhibition signage visible.
205 Richmond St West is a fully accessible building.
FILMS
Happy Birthday, Marsha!
Released: 2018 14 Minutes
Directed by Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel, Happy Birthday, Marsha! is a speculative documentary short film chronicling an imagined birthday celebration for renowned queer figure Marsha P. Johnson. Johnson resided in New York City from the late 1960s up to her death in the 1990s. She was a prominent figure for her efforts to raise awareness of civil rights for trans people and sex workers, known for her often ornate self-adornment. In the film, Johnson’s birthday coincides with the 1969 Stonewall Riots, although this is not chronologically accurate. The Stonewall Inn was an after-hours bar, and although not exclusively one which catered to a trans feminine crowd, the riots (a response to frequent police raids) were felt to be instigated by trans femme individuals. The film’s co-director Tourmaline draws heavily on recently discovered archival footage of Johnson in the film. a fixture of New York’s Christopher Street, a queer enclave in the 1970s and 80s.
Journée Internationale De La Transsexualité
Released: 1998 38 Minutes
Mirha Soleil-Ross directed this historically significant film held in the collection of Toronto Film and Video distributor VTape. Previously available only as a lower resolution digitized version, this version (digitized in 2023) is a beta cam master copy of the film held in the collection of The ArQuives, Canada's LGBTQ2S+ archive, which holds filmmaker Mirha-Soleil Ross’s archive. This digitization offers crispness of detail and richness in the textural elements.
BOOKS
Les Amies De Place Blanche
Published: 2011
Christophe Strömholm’s black and white photographs of trans feminine sex workers taken in the early 1960s Paris are captivating. The portraits are intimate, the subject-photographer relationship undeniable. With good reason this book has long stood as an important visual documentation of a visually striking yet marginalized community, first published in 1983, and later reprinted in 2011. The 2011 reprint was expanded to include written contributions from two of the subjects of Strömholm’s photographs, each of whom share about the respect they receive from him along with commentary on their lives as sex workers in Paris.
Pigalle People 1978 to 1979
Published: 2018
Jean Evelyn Atwood's photo essay Pigalle People 1978 to 1979 is a chronological jump forward to Paris in the late 1970s. 1979 is a significant moment in time, a period very close to the precipice of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which would brutally ravage LGBTQ2S+ communities in a few short years. The book's format resembles Les Amie De Place Blanche; it is filled with captivating high contrast black and white films photographs closely documenting the lives of Parisian sex workers. The book concludes with writing from the photographer about her relationship with her subjects and mentions the difficult lives many of them experienced.
Transvestie: Zeichnungen, Gouachen und Collagen : der silberne Cocon : Notizen zur Transvestiten-Szene in New York 1979-1985
Published: 1985
(Title translated from German: Transvestia: Drawings, Gouaches and Collages: The Silver Cocoon: Notes on the Transvestite Scene in New York 1979 – 1985) Swiss artist Hans Falk completed an extensive series of drawings based on his interactions with many New York City trans feminine individuals in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The loose sketches combined with watercolour imagery are sublime, evoking both the roughness and reality of life in New York City's Times Square prior to gentrification, an area which at the time was home to a handful of bars and nightclubs catering to the trans femme community. Along with the sketches the artist recorded details about his interactions and commentary on his subjects' lives, including names, addresses, and descriptions of nightclubs and theaters they worked and socialized in.
Voguing and The House Ballroom Scene of New York 1989 - 1992
Published: 2011
Photographer Chantel Regnault’s dazzling book documents the time in New York City's ballroom scene between 1989 to 1992. This period coincides with the release of the film Paris Is Burning, although Regnault’s book was released in 2011. Ballroom culture has a unique reverence for trans femininity, beautifully spotlit in this book which includes contextualizing information in the form of essays, interviews, and archival ephemera.
Kim by Bettina Rheims
Published: 1994
Kim is a poignant portrait of Kim Harlow, a renowned Parisian show girl completed following her death. The uniqueness of this book is the combination of text, Kim’s writing, and image, Bettina Rheim’s photographs. Kim's words are frank as she reflects on her transition, interactions with medical professionals, her life as a show girl and her upbringing. The highly stylized photographs attempt to recreate a transition-in-reverse, morphing Kim from glamorous showgirl to a more androgynous version of herself. Her consent to being represented in this way is recorded in the text.
C’Etait Du Spectacle!
Published: 2005
Viviane Namaste's C’Etait Du Spectacle! offers a multifaceted portrait of life in Montreal between 1955 and 1985 for trans and gender variant individuals (Namaste includes in her definition, the French term “travesti”, which despite an English translation to the outdated term transvestite is still used in the French-language context when referring to a trans feminine person who has not pursued medical interventions.) C’Etait Du Spectacle covers an exceptional range of subject matter, all told through anonymized ethnographic interviews. The book is available only in French.
EXHIBITION DESIGN
WALL TEXT
