On view: 11/3/22 - 1/7/2023
Opening Reception: 11/3/22 5:30 - 7:30pm
ft. the artist in conversation with Leila Weefur at 6pm
398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
FREE!
Still Lives, a Trans Portrait Project is a series of portraits of transgender people in the Bay Area by San Francisco based figurative painter Eamon McGivern. This solo exhibition at the Tenderloin Museum renders the quiet beauty and dignity of trans life over seven canvases, each shimmering with the nuance and tenderness of its subjects. McGivern’s practice is rooted in portraiture, and these paintings reflect a collaboration between artist and subject. They express the multitudinous nature of trans experience as well as its normalcy, depicting subjects engaged in everyday life: getting a haircut, enjoying a cigarette, at ease in the domestic sphere, or reveling in an idyllic San Francisco blue sky day with a loved one. Funded by the San Francisco Arts Commission, McGivern’s Still Lives were created for exhibition in the Tenderloin, a district in which the presence of a trans community was recorded as early as the 1920s, and which is now home to the nation’s first Transgender Cultural District. Here is what the artist has to say about their trans portrait project.
“The people in these paintings are my friends and community members. You might recognize a friend as well, or your hairdresser, barista, tattoo artist, coworker or the person sitting next to you on BART. The paintings are exhibited a few blocks away from the site of Compton’s Cafeteria where, three years before Stonewall, transgender women and gender nonconforming people fought back against discrimination and police violence. The Tenderloin is still home to many trans people, and the trans community in San Francisco has continued to grow in spite of all the hardships that face us. But transphobia is also growing: 2022 has been a high-water mark in anti-trans legislation so far, and the Christo-fascist far right has become increasingly focused on our community. This series of paintings was initially intended as a testament to trans joy and the joy of trans community. Looking at the finished work, it feels more like a collection of ordinary people living our lives under a regime that, when it allows us to live at all, works to exclude us from public life. Perhaps it is both, and more besides.”
Join us for an opening reception for Eamon McGivern’s Still Lives, a Trans Portrait Project on Thursday November 3, 2022 from 5:30 - 7:30pm to celebrate this incredible body of work. At 6pm, McGivern will discuss their work with one of the portrait subjects: Oakland based artist, writer, & curator Leila Weefur. This opening is part of the monthly SF First Thursday Art Walk in the Tenderloin & Lower Polk neighborhoods.