Association of Hysteric Curators

The Association of Hysteric Curators (AHC) envelops a fluid, evolving, trans-generational group of women who gather bi-weekly to share in a discussion around contemporary feminism and the historicity of the term. We seek to explore notions of female protest and the presence of gendered articulations through a non-hierarchical structure based in dialogue and exchange. As we honor the lineage of feminist models, we dare to envision a future of human equality, knowing we must interrogate the customs of today in order to enable conditions for change. As a working model, we understand that democratic consensus is slow and laborious in comparison to the type of fast paced and often decentralized systems found today. The reduced pace of our methodology allows for ideas to ebb and flow through ongoing conversations aimed at process over product. We are invitational and open, focused on explorations of female power through vistas of holes, blanks, ruptures, and catastrophes. As an agent of chaos and change, we posit our curatorial agenda as a figurative fault line; our research a body of water formed in a valley between two plates; our legacy the large-scale lateral movement along hundreds of miles of the fault: watch us as we spread and break down barriers, expanding and amplifying our space in society.

Members: Virginia Arce, Lili Bernard, Carolyn Castano, Blue Orchard, Cherie Benner Davis, Chelle Barbour, Angel Chen, Malado Baldwin, Diana Sofia-Estrada, Rachel Finkelstein, Christine Dianne Guiyangco, Nat George, Hazel Handan, Emma Kemp, Isabelle Ludderodt, Meg Madison, Mary Anna Pomonis, Cindy Rehm, Kim Russo, Allison Stewart, Guita Tahmassebi, Michiko Yao and Dajin Yoon.

Website:http://www.radicalactions.com/association-of-hysteric-curators

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FAR Bazaar Project

#homeeconomics

Description: The Association of Hysteric Curators look at the domestic sciences as a catalyst for contemporary conversations. #homeeconomics is a community space and lounge, with performances and workshops to facilitate discussion of past and contemporary feminism.

What Was Home Economics?
Canning peaches. Sewing a dress. Making perfect gravy. These are familiar images of home economics, but do they tell the whole story? So often home economics has been cast as a "conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen," an interpretation that has overlooked its impressive and diverse contributions. New scholarship in American women's history suggests that home economics was a progressive field that brought science to the farm home and women into higher education and leadership positions in public education, academia, government and industry.

- “From Domesticity to Modernity: What was Home Economics?” Cornell University, Ithaca NY

“I was lucky enough when I was growing up that my school made everyone take home economics AND shop class.  It was not gender specific which I thought was really cool.  After high school, I went on to get my undergrad degree in Industrial Arts to teach grades 7-12.  I was one of 5 girls out of 100 students in my major.  I felt really strongly that I could help encourage other girls to do the work that was more male oriented in society.  And visa versa—get the guys in the kitchen, teach them to sew, etc…Anyway, these programs were being phased out of schools by the time I got my degree and I never ended up teaching. So it’s interesting to look in on home economics today—I really have no idea what is being taught or if it even is at all!  ” 

-Deborah Adams-Wells, Discussing #homeeconomics Dec 2016

Participating artists : Allison Stewart, Carolyn Castaño, Ching Ching Cheng, Christine Dianne Guiyangco, Cristy Stiles, Christian Maldonado, Deborah Adams-Welles, Diana Sofia‐Estrada , Elizabeth Medina, Marjan Vayghan, Mary Anna Pomonis, Meg Madison, Rachel Finkelstein, Rosalyn Myles, Shirin Bolourchi, Armando Cortes, Alex Kay

Location: FA53

Participating Artists: Armando Cortes, Carolyn Castaño, Ching Ching Cheng, Christine Dianne Guiyangco, Christian Maldonado, Elizabeth Medina, Haeyong Moon, Lucia Santina Ribisi, Marjan Vayghan, Mary Anna Pomonis, Meg Madison, Rachel Finkelstein, Rosalyn Myles, Shirin Bolourchi, Allison Stewart, and Alex Kay

Armando Cortes (BA UCLA 2012) is an artist working and living in the industrial town of Wilmington, Ca. Originally from a small farming town in Mexico, he draws from repetitive labor and action, both in the fields and in industry, as well as in the home, as sources for his work and for the processes leading to completed works.  He says "The means to an end are often as important, if not more so, than the finished product. The distinction between the two is blurred making them interchangeable."
http://cargocollective.com/armandocortes

Carolyn Castaño  is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work in painting, drawing, video, and mixed-media installations has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters in Fine Art from the UCLA School of Art and Architecture.
http://www.carolyncastano.com/

Ching Ching Cheng was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States eleven years ago. She received her BFA from Art Center College of Design. She works in painting, drawing, sculpture and installation, influenced by historical and personal cultural experiences from one place to another. She exhibited at LACMA Rental and Sales Gallery, Chinese American Museum, colleges, universities and art fairs through out the United States, and attended an artist-in-residency program at 943 Studio in Kunming, China in 2011. Timothy Yarger Fine Art is currently representing her sculptures series.
http://www.chingchingcheng.com/

Christine Dianne Guiyangco was born in Philippines in 1992 and moved to United States in 2001. She currently works and lives in Los Angeles. She actively works in a range of fields including performance, painting, writing, installation, video, and sculpture. In 2014, she received her BA at the University of California Los Angeles. Her art practice is motivated by identity politics, feminist narratives, institutional frameworks, colonialism, social media, and the aftermath of art production.

Christian Maldonado is a gender fluid chican@ artist whom works primarily in digital media. Their work revolves around cyber space, dual consciousness structured by culture and identity as a Mexican American, and gender performance artist. Christian is an alumni of the University of California Los Angeles where they studied four years of art production and critical thinking under the guidance and critique of feminist art figureheads like Andre Fraser, MAP, &  Wendy Yao.

Cristy Stiles has been riding with LA women's cycling club She Wolf Attack Team since 2015, and will be joining their club track team as a novice rider this season. She is a MFA candidate in translation at Mills College, the administrative director at the Los Angeles-focused climate change organization Climate Resolve, and a cellist.

Deborah Adams-Welles is a visual artist living in Los Angeles. Working in large scale installation, her work engages in ideas of contemporary remix theory and the aesthetics of sampling, using structural references from music, architecture, and technology. She is currently an MFA candidate at Otis College of Art and Design and holds a bachelor's degree from Ohio State University with a major in Industrial Technology.
http://debadamswelles.com/home.html

Diana Sofia‐Estrada is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA cum laude in Painting/Drawing and BA cum laude in Psychology from the University of North Texas. In 2008, she received her MFA in art from the California Institute of Arts. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including Diaspora Vibe Gallery (Miami), Alice Yard Space (Trinidad), Box 13 (Houston), and at Artlab the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. She is founder and runs the online artist project www.ourprimeproperty.org  She teaches art and bicycles around Los Angeles. Estrada’s practice encompasses installation, video, drawing and painting, performance, and online media to question everyday expectation.
http://www.dianasofiaestrada.com/

Elizabeth Medina was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Medina is a recent MFA graduate of Otis College of Art and Design where she also served as a Teaching Assistant in Painting, and served as Exhibition Design and Gallery Coordinator for Bolsky Gallery. In 2014, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. She lives and works in San Pedro.

Haeyong Moon is an independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has been making personal films since 1998. She studied Cinema and Psychology at Binghamton University. And received her MFA in Film/Video from CalArts. Her films have screened in New York, Los Angeles, France and Korea. Her greatest inspirations are jazz, trees, kindness, poetry and cinema.
http://www.norestudio.com/contact

Lucia Santina Ribisi is a teenage activist, birth worker and artist from Los Angeles.  Her performances, paintings, and sculptures grapple with her identity as she faces the brink of “womanhood”. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles at MoCA, the Lodge, the Palladium, Studio 106, Hive Gallery, and Space 15 Twenty; in New York at The New Museum and School of Visual Arts; and in Paris at Careau du Temple and Mich Dulce Millnery. When she was only seventeen, one of her paintings was taken and used in Saint Laurent’s S/S 2016  collection by Hedi Slimane. She has been featured in such publications as Vogue, Flaunt Magazine, W Magazine, Elle Japan, Wallpaper, Marie Claire, Hey Woman!, and Teen Vogue.  Today, she's questioning the viability of commercial success; using “artwork” to experiment with her relationship to isolation, intimacy and tactile codependency whilst professionally working as a doula to educate and support people through birth and breastfeeding. She uses various mediums to dissect, synthesize and analyze her womb-body and it’s relationship to others. Her design work has gained some attention but the credibility of those accolades is questionable; she hopes that her work would encourage you to look beneath that shallow surface.

Marjan Vayghan Born to Azerbaijani parents in Tehran, Iran in 1984, Marjan Vayghan emigrated to the United States in the Spring of 1995, settling with her family in Los Angeles, California. Marjan continues to live alternately between Teheran and Los Angeles. Her practice is informed by this context of movement and flexible citizenship across both geographical and cultural spaces, and the multiple realities these spaces engender.
http://marjanv.com/

Mary Anna Pomonis is a Los Angeles based artist and founder of the Association of Hysteric Curators. Pomonis has shown at galleries and institutions including, the Western Carolina University Museum of Fine Arts, the Torrance Art Museum, the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, PØST, Annie Wharton Los Angeles, Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts Miami, Cirrus Gallery Los Angeles, Space B Gallery New York and I space gallery Chicago. Her artwork has appeared in the Huffington Post, Saatchi Online magazine, National Public Radio, Yale University Radio, Whitehot Magazine and Artweek. Additionally her curatorial projects and essays have been featured at commercial and college art galleries such as the Vincent Price Art Museum,The Whittier College Greenleaf Gallery, PØST, Peter Miller Gallery and Circus Gallery. She is currently co-editor with Annie Buckley of www.radicalactions.com.
http://www.resurrectingmatilda.com/

Meg Madison is an artist who currently uses photography and mapping to examine land use. She was born and raised in New York City, studied film at SFState University with Trinh T. Minh-ha who taught her “the things surrounding the subject are as important as the subject.”  Her work is exhibited in galleries, non-profit spaces, and museums in Los Angeles and beyond.   Madison is part of the collective OIMOA (Optical Image Makers of America) that is working on a show of the “the invisibles” and the Association of Hysteric Curators (AHC) bringing feminist  “actions” to art spaces in Los Angeles.
http://www.megmadison.com/

Rachel Finkelstein is a multidisciplinary lesbian/feminist artist. She is a co-founder of Circles, the first women’s film distribution group in the United Kingdom. Her work has been widely shown in Europe and Israel in such venues as the London Film Makers Co-Op, The Midland Group, ICA Cinematheque, A Women’s Art Space, Half Moon Photography and Museum of Modern Art Oxford. Finkelstein was a member of the production team for Suzanne Lacy’s Pacific Standard Time project, Three Weeks in January. She was also part of the performing team that recreated Myth of Rape and Liberstod. She was a member of The People’s Microphony Camerata and she served on the board of the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art. Rachel Finkelstein received a BA from Saint Martin’s College of Art, London and a MA from the Royal College of Art. London, England.

Rosalyn Myles is a native of Los Angeles. She is a  multi-media artist who like to tell stories using wood, textiles, film and installations. Her work often centers around  women and community issues, in particular communities of color. 

Shirin Bolourchi born on icy December in Tehran-Iran. She is an American-Iranian fine artist, independent curator, writer, poet and a blogger. In 1999 Shirin applied at Tehran Sooreh Art University and was admitted to the school of Dramatic Arts. She was graduated in 2004 with her B.F.A Degree in puppet theater directing. Following her education, she migrated to Canada and later to united states of America to continue her Post-Graduate in Fine Arts. Currently she is a graduate fine art student at Otis College of Art and Design's MFA Fine Arts program in Los Angeles.
https://shirinbolourchi.com/

Allison Stewart grew up in Houston, Texas and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.  She received her MFA in Photography from California State University Long Beach and her BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from the University of Houston.  Her work explores the construction of American identity through its relics, rituals, and mythologies.  Her work has been shown in gallery and museum spaces internationally, including The Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, The Torrance Art Museum, The New Mexico History Museum, Houston Center for Photography, SITE: Brooklyn, and Soho Photo Gallery in New York City.  In 2015 she was a Houston Center for Photography Fellowship Honorable Mention and in college was awarded the Ellen Battel Fellowship at Yale university. Her work is included in the Rubell Family Collection, The New Mexico History Museum Palace of the Governors Photo Archive, and private collections.
http://allison-stewart.com/

Alex Kay was born in Moscow, Russia in 1982. He traveled and lived all over the world with his family until moving to the United States in 2010. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Professional Photography at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. His multicultural perspective has now poured itself into the digital realm. Just as Uda Barth creates in the confines of her own home, Kay has turned to computer technology as his fountainhead. It is at once his entertainment, social hub, library, shopping mall, and art studio. In this realm Kay is investigating the digital culture’s perceptions of art, religion, and fame.