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Every Ocean Hughes

Every Ocean Hughes, born in 1977 and formerly known as Emily Roysdon, is a multimedia interdisciplinary artist based in New York and Stockholm. They also work as a writer and currently hold the position of Professor of Art at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden. Hughes employs various mediums such as performance, photography, printmaking, text, video, curating, and collaboration to express their artistic vision.

Education

Hughes was an undergraduate at Hampshire College, from which they graduated with a BA in 2000. In 2001, they completed the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Hughes received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006.

LTTR

In 2002 Hughes helped as a co-founder of the feminist genderqueer artist collective and annual literary journal Lesbians To The Rescue (LTTR), which remained an active part of the queer art theory community until 2008, along with Ginger Brooks Takahashi and K8 Hardy. LTTR was dedicated to "highlighting the work of radical communities whose goals are sustainable change, queer pleasure, and critical feminist productivity."

Ecstatic resistance

Hughes developed the concept of "ecstatic resistance" in 2009 to talk about the impossible and imaginary in politics. In their essay on the topic, Hughes says, "Ecstatic Resistance is a project, practice, partial philosophy and set of strategies. It develops the positionality of the impossible alongside a call to re-articulate the imaginary. Ecstatic Resistance is about the limits of representation and legibility — the limits of the intelligible, and strategies that undermine hegemonic oppositions. It wants to talk about pleasure in the domain of resistance — sexualizing modern structures to centralize instability and plasticity in life, living, and the self. It is about waiting, and the temporality of change. Ecstatic Resistance wants to think about all that is unthinkable and unspeakable in the Eurocentric, phallocentric world order." In addition to their essay being published in Grand Arts and Toronto's C Magazine, the project also was inclusive of a "practice, partial philosophy, set of strategies, and group exhibition(s)" that were all organized and curated by Hughes.

The two simultaneous sister shows were exhibited at Grand Arts (Nov. 13 - Jan. 16, 2010) and X Initiative in NYC (Nov. 21 - Feb. 6, 2010) and incorporated the art and performance of Yael Bartana, Sharon Hayes, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, My Barbarian, Jeanine Oleson, Ulrike Ottinger, Adrian Piper, Dean Spade and Craig Willse, A.L. Steiner, Rosa Barba, Juan Davila, Xylor Jane, My Barbarian in collaboration with Liudni Slibinai, Ulrike Muller, A.L. Steiner, Joyce Wieland, Leah Gilliam, Julianna Snapper, PIG/ Politically Involved Girls (Wu Ingrid Tsang, Zackary Drucker, and Mariana Marroquin), and Ian White. The New York Times' Roberta Smith wrote that "Ms. Roysdon's title connotes a spirit of Zen activism, with absurdity substituting for ideology, but with politics still in the picture."

Other collaborations

Hughes's many other collaborations include costume design for choreographers Levi Gonzalez, Vanessa Anspaugh, Le Tigre, and Faye Driscoll, as well as lyric writing for The Knife, and JD Samson & MEN.

Solo project

Recent solo projects include:

Alive Slide (2023) this exhibit was four works of photographs, film, and two performances, all derived from Hughes experience as a death doula, guiding people through the dying process. It includes: River (2023), which tells a story of character who makes crossings to the underworld. The work wonders what happens if we stay with death instead of looking away. More analysis on River can be found on Cultured Magazine. Help the Dead (2019), which is a sixty minute musical in the form of a workshop. One Big Bag (2021) a forty minute video installation that uses a mobile corpse kit. This was also Hughes' first solo exhibit in the UK co-commissioned by Studio Voltaire, London and Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Lastly, featured alongside The Piers Untitled (2009-23), a photographic series of the piers on Manhattan's west side as a memorial to marginalized communities and underground cultures that once occupied the waterfront. Further analysis of this project can be read about in ArtForum.

Older solo projects include:

Using silver gelatin photograms, screen print collages, laser jet prints, and offset prints was scenic, say (Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, 2017). Reading the Shade of Pink Triangle (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, 2014), which was an upside down pink triangle a symbol of gay power and LGBTQ identities. Comedy of Margin Theatre (Secession, Vienna, 2015) consisted of laser jet prints, paint, handmade clock, and costumes. Our Short Century(Venice Biennial, 2014) was a single-channel video and nineteen photographs that won the Future Generation Art Prize. Uncounted(2014-2017), was an installation of text in twenty-three parts alongside sound that engages in vocabulary of movement and trespass, suggesting a way of existence "beyond the will to measure." Another piece entitled A Gay Bar Called Everywhere (with costumes and no practice) (2011/2022), was a collaborative performance inspired by writer and philosopher Susan Sontag's life and work in a gay bar, to perform the changes, challenges, and glories that have shaped queer lifetimes. Some other works include Sense and Sense (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010), Untitled (David Wojnarowicz project)(2001-2007), I am a helicopter, camera, queen (Tate Modern, London, 2012), and Into the Body or Into the Medium, Barbara Hammer (Tate Modern, London, 2012).

Publishing Works include:

West Street (New York, 2010), LTTR (New York, 2001-2006), Uncounted: Call & Response (Vienna, 2015), Ecstatic Resistance (Kansas, 2009).

Art showings and festivals

Hughes first museum survey in Europe, Alivetime, was held at the Moderna Musseet in Stockholm, Sweden from March 2022 to April 2022. This consisted of their most significant works from the past decade that addressed the struggles and ingenuity of queer life through the spaces and temporalities of an exhibition.

Hughes's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2023), Studio Voltaire, London (2022), Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2017), Secession, Vienna (2015), Participant Inc., New York (2015), commissions from Tate Modern (2012, 2017), Portland Instistute for Contemporary Art (2013-2014), and the Berkeley Art Museum (2010).

Their work has also been featured in the 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016), the Biennale of Sydney (2014), the Future Generation Art Prize 2012 exhibition and its collateral event at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the Whitney Biennial, New York (2010), and Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain (2010),Greater NY, MoMA/PS1(2010),and The Generational, New Museum (2009). As well as in group exhibits at Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2017), Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014), Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden (2014), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2011), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2010).

Grants and awards

Hughes completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001 and an Interdisciplinary MFA at UCLA in 2006. They have received grants and residencies from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2010), Franklin Furnace (2009), Wexner Center for the Arts (2009), Art Matters (2008), the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden (IASPIS, 2008), and the Hammer Museum (2018-2019). In 2012 Hughes was a finalist for the Future Generation Art Prize.

Hughes was Camden Art Centre's 'Artist-at-large' digital residency artist through 2018 and 2019. This is where Hughes explored the idea of 'queer death'. Hughes used the histories of kinship and care within LGBTQ communities to explore what it meant to survive and die on our planet in our current times. In this residency, Hughes produced a digital publication of an interview they conducted with Barbara Hammer.

From 2019 to 2020 Hughes was a Mary I Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Works in permanent collections

• The New York Public Library's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York

External links

• Every Ocean Hughes
• MoMA Audio interview with Emily Roysdon about Sense and Sense
• Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Side, Witney Museum of American Art
• Every Ocean Hughes in Conversation with Catherine Wood
• Every Ocean Hughes interviews on BBC radio Women's Hour
• The Guardian 'You need glue, tampons and ice': artist Every Ocean Hughes on how to help the dying
• Hughes in Kunsitinstituut Melly Podcast on name change, episode 3
• Barbara Forever email exchange with EOH. Part of Hughes residency at Camden Arts Centre, London.
• Speaker Series: Every Ocean Hughes, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College
• "What instruments Have We?": A Conversation with Every Ocean Hughes

Further reading

• Hughes documented as bringing queer voices into feminist art with their reenactment of Carolee Schneeman's Interior Scroll
• Hughes mentioned their photography series on predecessor David Wojnarowicz
• Hughes included in multiple parts of this article for their involvement in LTTR, their photography series on Wojnarowicz, and their work with ecstatic resistance
• Hughes cited as providing inspiration to K8 Hardy via their concept of ecstatic resistance
• Witch Hunt, Connie Butler and Anne Ellegood ; organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

References

Practice for my User Page:

My Favorite Animal is an Elephant

Here is a sentence in Italics.

Here is an external link to Elephants.

Here is an internal link to Elephants.

A fact about elephants is that there are three species and the easiest way to tell the species apart is through their ears.

For Our Class Project

I chose the artist Every Ocean Hughes. I chose Hughes because they are based in New York and Stockholm, which I am from New Jersey and studied abroad last year in Stockholm. So, I am very excited to explore their work more and help edit the Wikipedia page.