Folks can catch an activist multimedia show from Ailecia Ruscin and friends celebrating generations of queer and punk culture during Final Friday in downtown Lawrence.
“Punk, Queer, Activist Art” will be hosted by The Livingroom Collective, which has had a three-month downtown residency through OpenStudios.
The show will run from 5 p.m. to midnight Friday, Sept. 25 at 938 Massachusetts St.
The exhibition is a birthday celebration and retrospective of more than three decades of work from artist Ruscin, plus the work of her friends and collaborators.
“I have spent my life documenting countercultures in America, as part of my lived experience in these communities,” she said in an email. “These communities include: riot grrrl, punk, anarchist, feminist, queer, antiracist, hip hop and activist movements spanning from anti-war to environmentalism.”
The fruits of that work will be on display, with selections from around 15 of her past shows examining topics like gender, independent hip hop and punk music shows, anarchist organizing at Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library — which existed on Mass Street — and more.
For example, she’ll share images from a solo exhibition called “The Water Closet: Portraits of Queers in Public Bathrooms,” which originally showed at Henry’s on Eighth in 2009.
“These original color portraits were made to discuss bathrooms as contested spaces for LGBTQIA people, at the time I wanted to shed light on the issues of where transgender people and butch women pee vs the dichotomy of bathrooms being erotic spaces for queer men,” Ruscin said. “Now the public debates on public bathrooms and transgender people is part of our national dialogue 17 years later, especially here in Kansas.”
Here are a few more featured artists:
• Dave Loewenstein, a local organizer, printmaker and muralist
• Leslie Kuluva, owner of LFK Press who created a screenprinting shop above Solidarity’s first location
• Bob Cutler, an independent journalist and punk/alternative music figure
• Brandt Minden, a queer acrylic painter with a trademark rainbow style
The full lineup also includes Colby Earlywine, Nicholas Maher, Devón Gibson, Aunt Deckia/Alexia Coday, Inclusive Abundance Jewelry, and Juliet Kellar, Prairie Band Potawatomi, with Kmonquah Creations.
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