2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptation
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print this pageThe Fellowship: Subverting the Imagined Family Portrait in Photography
Panel with Clifford Pun, Chris Velasco, and Donna Brown
Saturday, November 02 - 10:45AM to 11:30AM
de Saisset Museum Auditorium
In this panel presentation, artists Donna Brown, Clifford Pun, and Christopher Velasco will present a series of portraits, informally titled after their art collective: "The Family." They use costume, hair, and makeup to emphasize photography's well-known ability to exaggerate, disturb, and record. Through these "drag-ish" masquerades — they resist their identities as people of color — in order to recognize the artifice and power structures behind images. The presentation will highlight various contemporary issues including racial identity, gender, sexuality, and social justice by tracing their varied interests in feminism, "The Beauty Myth", horror films, camp, and stereotypes. Current political and cultural influences on the series will be discussed, including a brief introduction of their artistic influences, such as the late Laura Aguilar. In addition, each presenter will briefly discuss their own individual bodies of work to demonstrate how and why they came together as a collective.
speakers
Chris Velasco
Clifford Pun
Donna Brown
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