Tony Whitfield
Blood and Roses (Cocktail Napkins)
Printed paper, 24 count
4.75" x 4.75"
BLOOD + ROSES FOR QUEER LOVE IN UGANDA:
The passage of Uganda's anti-LGBTQ+ penal code, also known as the “Kill the Gays Bill,” in 2023, was the realization of an agenda articulated by Ugandans in collaboration with Right-Wing American Christians led by Scott Lively in 2009.
At the time, that legislation received severe backlash internationally, resulting in a retreat from executions as a penalty. At that time, Tony Whitfield created, Chapel for the Betrayed, an installation for New York's Museum of Art and Design's exhibition, The Global Africa Project, for which Whitfield was also a catalog essayist. It was the only work of art in the exhibition that addressed brutal homophobia as a current pulsing through much of the continent.
In 2012, the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History included Chapel for the Betrayed in Pop-Up Philadelphia, at The William Way LGBT Community Center in April, 2012. Eleven years later years later, this piece became is tragically relevant again.
Proceeds from Tony Whitfield and Whitfield CoLabs’ Blood and Roses… works that are available through Wasserman Projects, after expenses, will be donated by Whitfield CoLabs and Wasserman Project to Outright International's Uganda Fund.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Tony Whitfield (b. 1954) is a 2023 Kresge Artist Fellow. His multimedia works have been presented by New York’s LaMaMa, Experimental Theater Club, in solo exhibitions at HOWL! Happening in NYC, the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano in Lima, Peru, the LGBTQ Centre in Paris, and group exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, BRIC, Leslie Lohman Museum of Lesbian and Gay Art, The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History. His video installation, Paris, 1938, was featured in Paris’ NUIT BLANCHE 2017.