arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified: Chapter Eight
Curated by Jo-ey Tang
March 2–May 11, 2025
Opening reception: Sunday, March 2, 5-7pm | open Wed–Sun, noon-7pm
arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified: Chapter Eight is the latest exhibition chapter of an ongoing project that explores the resonances between the individual practices of the four artists, and their collaborative work as the queer art collective fierce pussy.
Originally formed in 1991, in New York City, fierce pussy began as a shifting cadre of activists who brought lesbian identity and visibility into the streets. Four of the original core members—Nancy Brooks Brody (1962-2023), Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka—have continued to work together around issues of queer visibility and trans rights. In their individual practices across photography, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture, the artists share an attention to the mutability of materials as a mode of inquiry into subjectivity, perception, time, and history. Chapter Eight brings their expansive and resonant art practices into conversation, activating perceptual and political agencies.
This project was conceived by artist and curator Jo-ey Tang in collaboration with the artists, and has unfolded over multiple chapters, each containing a non-chronological selection of artworks from the late 1980s to the present. Throughout the chapters, artworks re-appear to create changing juxtapositions and proximities.
Chapter Eight is dedicated to Nancy Brooks Brody (1962-2023).
Related Programming
Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 5pm, Triple Canopy hosts a conversation with writer Lauren O’Neill-Butler and Thomas (T.) Jean Lax (Curator, Department of Media and Performance, Museum of Modern Art).
Monday, April 28, 2025 at 7pm, the Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Monday presents a screening of Joy Episalla’s film As long as there's you, As long as there's me (2023), with a performance by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, and a conversation with Stuart Comer and Jo-ey Tang.
Learn more here.