The Tamesis
There is no doubt that Carmen Maria Machado is famous for her writing. Just three years after the publication of her critically acclaimed collection of short stories her body and other partiesMachado’s 2019 memoir, in dream housewinner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction.
This week, however, the Pennsylvania-born writer celebrated the opening of “The Object of Power Is Power,” an exhibition of work by contemporary Cuban artist Rocio Garcia that Machado has curated for New York’s Leslie Lohman Museum of Art.
“I don’t have any educational background in visual arts, so what’s interesting is that I’ve been working a lot with visual artists over the past decade,” Machado tells me as we walk through Leslie Loman’s spacious, light-filled gallery, which currently houses about a dozen of Garcia’s works. “It’s not that I’m looking at this from an art historian’s point of view or anything, it’s more that I’m asking: What is my creative response to this work?“
Themes of power, pain, desire, sex, and fear animate much of Machado and Garcia’s work, making a multimedia collaboration between the two creatives feel especially fitting. Machado, who is also of Cuban descent, noted that while working with Garcia, who lives in Havana, presented some logistical challenges—“because it’s very difficult to get things out of Cuba right now”—seeing the artist’s work in person was a revelation.
“This guy is Jack the Punisher, and he reappears in another series here,” Machado told me of a BDSM-clad figure on one wall of the exhibit. “Rosio has such a narrative that the art almost feels closer to a collection of short stories or something.”
Fans of Machado’s unique, sharp writing voice won’t be disappointed with the text she contributed to Garcia’s show, which reads, in part: “How many times have you begged someone to tie you up? How many times have you begged someone to untie you? Why do joy and fear swirl so closely together in the blue light? Why do we insist on loving with suspicion?”
“The Object of Power Is Power” will be on view through September 20 at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art.
