FotoFest Hot Picks by Anne H. Roberts

FotoFest is an amazing phenomenon that has happened in Houston once every two years since 1986, as some of the most famous and interesting photographers working today show their work and come to town from all over the world to view each others’ work. FotoFest itself has curated 32 exhibitions on this year’s theme, The Classical Eye and Beyond, and more than 125 arts organizations and other venues are sponsoring their own FotoFest exhibits. Most of the openings are March 1, and then run throughout the month. There are far too many exhibits to list here, but you can find complete information at www.fotofest.org, or visit FotoFest headquarters in the Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine Street, just east of downtown, 713/223-5522.

We present two of FotoFest’s featured photographers who are openly gay and whose work explores questions of gender.

Was Krazy Kat a girl or a boy?

New York artist Martha Burgess has described her work as "somewhere between the archive and the kitchen sink." Gumshoe, the work to be shown at Fotofest, includes references to art history, Chinese history (in particular, the history of lesbian women), linguistics, feminist and queer studies, and popular culture.

"I grew up with television and video," Burgess says. "I am happy when there are a hundred things going at the same time–I am walking, listening to the radio, looking at a monitor, and talking on a cell phone."

Burgess draws on all these sources to explore her primary interest, which is gender and sexuality: what is so-called "appropriate" for each gender. At the root of her work is her belief that the mind is without gender. For example, Burgess did an installation last year at Rice University’s Sewell Art Gallery inspired by George Herriman’s early 20th-century comic strip Krazy Kat. What interested Burgess was that Krazy Kat herself, or himself, was constantly changing gender.

This year’s Fotofest theme is "The Classics and Beyond"–and Burgess’s digital muti-media work definitely falls into the "beyond" category. Burgess creates an installation with graphics, furniture, prints, and a series of interactive computer stations–with a click of the mouse, one luscious, color-laden image dissolves into another, or into an animated sequence, or a sound track, or video clip, poem, joke, or interactive story–all diffused with Burgess’s wry sense of humor.

Starting as a sculptor at Yale in the early ’80s, Burgess has worked as a freelance photographer and digital consultant, and even done a stint at IBM in its glory days. She has lectured on Queer Deconstruction at Barnard College and for the Women’s Caucus of the College Art Association, and is currently teaching digital media at the Parsons School of Design. Burgess has received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for Gumshoe–the piece being previewed at FotoFest as a work in progress.

Martha Burgess’s Gumshoe, Opus 23, "moonlighting," will run March 1—April 1 at Blumenthal Sheet Metal, 1720 Burnett, 713/223-5522. Hours: March 1-17, Mon.—Sun., 12—6 p.m.; March 18—April 1, Wed.—Sun.: 12—6 p.m. Opening and street party is Sun., March 3, 8—11 p.m.

If we could change history…

Los Angeles artist Ken Gonzales-Day recreates history in his imagination and camera lens. In his lush beautiful work The Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conefos River, he creates a novel/historical document that never existed about a Native American man and Latino man who were heroes during the Mexican/American war.

Using digital manipulation, Gonzales-Day portrays the fictional tale of Ramoncita, a Native/Latina berdache–"a term which is no longer used, but which acknowledged a kind of third, or alternative, gender model among many native cultures, and the Zuni in particular," according to the catalog essay–and Nepomuceno, a New Mexican soldier fighting for Mexico, but sneaking back into his homeland.

But of course this is fiction, Gonzales-Day says in his catalog essay, because during the actual conquest of the West, there would never have been a novel that contained Native and Latino characters as heroes instead of ridiculous extras.

Ken Gonzales-Day: The Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River at FotoFest Headquarters, Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine Street, 713/223-5522. March 1-April 1, hours: Mon.-Sun.: 9 a.m.—6 p.m.