Homo on the Range

Where the skies are not cloudy all day, the exhibition Homo on the Range is prompted by the childhood lawn, elucidating the dialectic of desire and violence inherent in the conception of home. In a theatrical mise-en-scene, Jess Dobkin, Richard Fung, Tim McCaskell, Jordan Elliott Prosser, and Evan Sproat present artworks that respond to the complexities of desire, personal mythology, and mementos from the past, deconstructing the picket fence in the search of possible futures. The exhibition positions violence as the residue left on queer desire in the creation of new definitions for home, combining existing, commissioned, and repurposed artworks as actors in the unfolding scene. The socio-political materiality of the lawn is reflected in the Art Museum, reorienting the visitor’s body and challenging conventional modes of viewership by highlighting the architecture of the space. Attention to embodiment, affect, and performativity initiates a dialogue between queer ethics and home to ask whether embodied desire is possible within the frameworks of contemporary culture. Homo on the Range is the second installment of projects responding to the theme of pleasure through curatorial interventions exploring the aesthetic potentials of queer home.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.