Nothing Lower Than I
A Video Performance by Xandra Ibarra
 
ADMISSION:
Admission is free. 

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DESCRIPTION:
Join performance artist and sculptor Xandra Ibarra as she explores leather, sex, and vulnerability inspired by the Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose collections at the ONE Archives at USC. Anchored in an artistic study of Flanagan and Rose’s canonical performances exploring sadism, masochism, pleasure, illness, and disability in Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s, Ibarra will construct and fashion wheelchair parts with Mexican leather tooling and upholstery. The original performance video will be followed by an illuminating conversation with UC Riverside professor Jennifer Doyle, California College of the Arts professor Tina Takemoto, postdoctoral fellow at the ONE Archives Jeanne Vaccaro, and special guest Sheree Rose.
 
Bios:
Xandra Ibarra, who sometimes works under the alias of La Chica Boom, is an Oakland-based performance artist and community organizer from the U.S./Mexico border region of El Paso/Juárez. Ibarra works across performance, video, and sculpture to address abjection and joy and the borders between proper and improper racial, gender, and queer subjectivities. Her art has been featured at El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Bogotá), The Broad (Los Angeles), ExTeresa Arte Actual (Mexico City), the Leslie-Lohman Museum (New York City), and the Anderson Collection (Stanford). Ibarra’s work is located within feminist, immigrant, anti-rape, and prison abolitionist movements.

Jennifer Doyle is a scholar, critic, and independent curator based in Los Angeles. She writes about sexual politics, art, and sports. Doyle is professor of English at University of California, Riverside, and the author of Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire, Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art, and Campus Sex / Campus Security. As a curator, she advocates for performance-centered practices and has worked with Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Vincent Price Art Museum, and The Broad in Los Angeles. Doyle is a member of the Board of Directors for Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA).

Sheree Rose is an American artist, photographer, cinematographer, and legend of Los Angeles performance Art. She has been involved in feminism and the punk scene, and is known for her work in sex politics, activism within the BDSM community, and her collaborations with her husband Bob Flanagan.

Tina Takemoto is the Dean of Humanities & Sciences at California College of the Arts, where they have taught in Visual Studies, graduate Fine Arts, graduate Visual & Critical Studies, and the college-wide curriculum since 2003. Takemoto has held key leadership positions at CCA including serving as chair of the Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure Committee, where they did important collaborative work on promotions policy and process.  Takemoto is a visual studies scholar and artist whose work explores issues of race, queer identity, memory, and grief. 

Jeanne Vaccaro is a curator and scholar at the ONE Archives and in the Department of Gender Studies at USC. She works on the aesthetics of embodiment, and her curatorial endeavors derive from questions of the public and pedagogical. Selected publications include Trap Door, GLQ, Radical History Review, Social Text, and BOMB Magazine. Vaccaro has curated exhibitions on the feminist art of self help, transgender histories, sci-fi, and disability.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Jeanne Vaccaro (ONE Archives at USC Libraries and Gender and Sexuality Studies). Co-sponsored by La CASA.

Images: 
Xandra Ibarra, Mexi Strap-On Harnesses, 2015
Wheelchair parts and zombie courtesy of the artist, Xandra Ibarra