Policing Gender is an installation of photographs and audio created by artist Lorenzo Triburgo. The photographs in Policing Gender are abstract metaphors on absence and imprisonment and the audio component is a compilation of voices of LGBTQ prisoners with whom the artist has been writing on a long-term basis.

Policing Gender will be on view at the Bureau from June 8 through September 10, 2017

In Policing Gender, as in his previous body of work Transportraits, Triburgo employs visual connotations of landscape and portrait photography to cast a critical lens on notions of the “Natural” and the politics of queer representation, this time in service of prison abolition as a crucial queer issue.

In his art works Lorenzo Triburgo consistently confronts the overlapping ideas of American identity, authenticity, and photography’s critical role in framing and constructing our understanding of identity and reality.

His series, Transportraits, has been exhibited widely in major cities across the United States, Europe and Asia and won first place in the gender category in the international photography competition, the Pride Photo Award in 2012. He was awarded a Project Grant through the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland, OR for his current project Policing Gender that examines mass incarceration from a queer perspective. Triburgo exhibits this project at learning institutions throughout the U.S. and hosts workshops regarding the radical, transformative act of becoming a pen pal with community members behind bars.

Triburgo has work in the permanent collection at the Portland Art Museum and has been published and written about in various web and print journals including PDN, Slate, The Huffington Post, and the website for The Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Aizura, and published by Routledge. He holds a BA from New York University in Photography and Gender Studies and an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts. He lives and works in NYC.

Exhibition-related programs:

TELL 35: Policing Gender

Saturday, June 10th, 7—9 PM

TELL is an evening of storytelling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014. In conjunction with the exhibition, Policing Gender will serve as the theme of TELL 35. This special edition of TELL will feature stories of justice, resistance, love, and friendship from formerly incarcerated LGBTQ folks, prison abolition activists, and queers impacted by “policing gender.”

Envisioning Our Future

Thursday, September 7th, 6:30—8:30 PM

A panel of experts from a spectrum of perspectives will discuss prison abolition as a political imperative to LGBTQ activism. Panelists will discuss immediate and future abolitionist goals, tangible strategies for resistance, and hope in the vision of a different future.