The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will present No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake, the first museum survey of New York-based artist, educator, and curator Nayland Blake (b. 1960) since 2003, and the artist’s most comprehensive presentation to date.
For over 30 years, Nayland Blake has been a critical figure in American art, working between sculpture, drawing, performance, and video. Heavily inspired by feminist and queer liberation movements, and subcultures ranging from punk to kink, Blake’s multidisciplinary practice considers the complexities of representation, particularly racial and gender identity. Blake examines desire, loss, and power through references to play and fantasy. The artist’s sustained meditation on “passing” and duality as a queer, biracial (African American and white) person is grounded in post-minimalist and conceptual approaches made personal though an array of materials, such as leather, medical equipment, tar, stuffed animals, and food.