Please join us Thursday, May 3 to celebrate Lyle Ashton Harris’ monograph Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs with an evening of conversation with Lyle Ashton Harris, Thomas Allen Harris, and Alex Fialho.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, a radical cultural scene emerged across the globe, finding expression in the galleries, nightclubs, and bedrooms of New York, London, Los Angeles, and Rome. In Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, the artist’s archive of 35mm Ektachrome images are presented alongside journal entries and recollections by additional contributors coalescing in a presentation of what Harris has described as “ephemeral moments and emblematic figures… against a backdrop of seismic shifts in the art world, the emergence of multiculturalism, the second wave of AIDS activism, and incipient globalization.” The Ektachrome Archive “constructs collective and private narratives to comment on identity, desire, sexuality, and loss” and was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
 

Copies of Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs (Aperture Foundation, 2017) are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. Harris has exhibited work widely, including at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) among many others, as well as at international biennials (São Paulo, 2016; Busan, 2008; Venice, 2007; Seville, 2006; Gwangju, 2000). His work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums, most recently The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014 Harris joined the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome and was recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.). In 2016 he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was appointed a trustee of the Tiffany Foundation. Having studied at Wesleyan University, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Harris is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art Education at New York University.
 

Born in the Bronx and raised in New York City and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Thomas Allen Harris began his career as a photographer before producing for public television, for which he received several awards including two Emmy nominations (in 1991) for his work as a staff producer at WNET (New York’s PBS affiliate) on THE ELEVENTH HOUR. Harris is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a 2015 NAACP Image Award, United States Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, A Blade of Grass Fellow as well as a Tribeca Film Institute’s Nelson Mandela Award. Harris has taught, written and lectured widely on media.<
Harris is the founder and President of Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique audio-visual experiences that illuminate the Human Condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality. Chimpanzee’s innovative and award-winning films have received critical acclaim at International film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, FESPACO, Outfest, Flaherty and Cape Town and have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, ARTE, as well as CBC, Swedish Broadcasting Network and New Zealand Television. In addition, Harris’ videos and installations have been featured at museums and galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Biennial, Corcoran Gallery, Reina Sophia, London Institute of the Arts and the Gwangju Biennale. He has held positions as Associate Professor of Media Arts at the University of California San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Film and New Media at Sarah Lawrence College.
 

Alex Fialho is a curator and arts writer based in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Artforum, and Programs Director at Visual AIDS, where he facilitates projects around both the history and immediacy of the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, with particular stakes intervening against recent widespread whitewashing of HIV/AIDS cultural narratives.
Fialho has worked closely with Lyle Ashton Harris and Thomas Allen Harris in multiple capacities. In the context of Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art programs, Fialho collaborated to commission new short videos from the artists: Lyle Ashton Harris’ Selections from the Ektachrome Archive was featured in Day With(out) Art 2014 ALTERNATE ENDINGS and Thomas Allen Harris’ About Face: The Evolution of a Black Producer was featured in Day With(out) Art 2017 ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett. Fialho’s 6 hour oral history with Lyle Ashton Harris will be included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s “Visual Art & The AIDS Epidemic Oral History Project” and Fialho covered Lyle Ashton Harris’ Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs: Selections from the Eckachrome Archive for Bookforum. Lyle Ashton Harris and Thomas Allen Harris will be honored alongside Steed Taylor with the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award on May 21, 2018.