Joey Terrill Walkthrough of “Axis Mundo”

Admission is free.

Join artist Joey Terrill for a walkthrough of the exhibition Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. at MOCA Pacific Design Center. A central figure in the artist networks profiled in Axis Mundo, beginning in the 1970s Terrill worked across a wide-range of mediums, including screen printing, mail art, comic books, T-shirts, and painting, to visualize queer Chicano aesthetics and politics. Terrill will discuss his work as well as the work of close peers and collaborators in the exhibition.

Bio

Joey Terrill is a formative figure in the Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism and is a former board member of VIVA!, the first gay and lesbian Latino art organization in Los Angeles. Painting and making art since the 1970s, Terrill was always interested in exploring the intersection of Chicano and gay male identity, (where they overlap and where they clash) as a strategy for art production. A seminal work from that time was Homeboy Beautiful magazine from 1978 and 1979, the two copies of which were re-issued in 2015 in collaboration with the Maricón Collective–the queer Chicano art & DJ group–and featured at the L.A. Art Book Fair by Printed Matter at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Over the last few years he has come to embrace the current investigation of his work as a touchstone for Latinx Queer artists today. He has contributed to exhibitions ranging from Art AIDS America (Tacoma Art Museum, 2015), to Queerly Tèhuäntin (Galería de la Raza, San Francisco, 2017), and Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA. (ONE Archives at the USC Libraries with MOCA, Los Angeles, 2017). With works from the pre-AIDS 1970s, like Homeboy Beautiful, as well as recent paintings and still lifes with HIV medications, he seeks to engage with the exploration of queer identity found in current artistic practice.

A second generation native Angeleno, he attended Immaculate Heart College and lists influences as diverse as pop art, Corita Kent, David Hockney , Mexican retablos, and 20th century painters ranging from Romaine Brooks to Frida Kahlo. He hopes his work conveys the energy, politics and creative synergy of Chicano and queer art circles in Los Angeles.

Image: (top) Teddy Sandoval, Joey Terrill wearing his maricón T-shirt, c. 1976. Black and white photograph. Collection of Joey Terrill. Courtesy of Paul Polubinskas