Mark Aguhar

Mark Cagaanan Aguhar (May 16, 1987 – March 12, 2012)[1] was an American activist, writer[2][3] and multimedia fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and transgender femme-identified. Aguhar was made famous by her Tumblr blog that questioned the mainstream representation of the "glossy glorification of the gay white male body".[4][5][6]

Mark Aguhar
Born
Mark Cagaanan Aguhar

(1987-05-16)May 16, 1987
Houston, Texas,
United States
DiedMarch 12, 2012(2012-03-12) (aged 24)
Chicago, Illinois,
United States
EducationUniversity of Illinois at Chicago (MFA), University of Texas at Austin (BA)

Life

Aguhar was born May 16, 1987 in Houston, Texas in a Filipino American family.[7][8] She attended the University of Texas at Austin.[7][9] Aguhar's works include performance-based pieces, watercolors, collages, and photography. Often the work was of self-portraits with hair extensions, make-up, gender-specific clothing and a beautiful, unashamed portrait of herself, curves and all and reminds the viewer that Aguhar's life and mere existence was an act of confronting white hegemony.[7]

Aguhar maintained an online presence on Tumblr, which hosted both her professional and personal websites. As Tumblr user "calloutqueen," she titled her blog "BLOGGING FOR BROWN GURLS," posting her thoughts about sexuality, sex, dating, gender, and her work.[1][10]

"My work is about visibility. My work is about the fact that I'm a genderqueer person of color fat femme fag feminist and I don't really know what to do with that identity in this world. It's that thing where you grew up learning to hate every aspect of yourself and unlearning all that misery is really hard to do. It's that thing where you kind of regret everything you've ever done because it's so complicit with white hegemony. It's that thing where you realize that your own attempts at passive aggressive manipulation and power don't stand a chance against the structural forms of domination against your body. It's that thing where the only way to cope with the reality of your situation is to pretend it doesn't exist; because flippancy is a privilege you don't own but you're going to pretend you do anyway."

— Mark Aguhar

Aguhar was only a few months away from earning her MFA degree from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) when she died by suicide in Chicago, Illinois, on March 12, 2012.[11][12]

Legacy

Since 2012, there is a "Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant" available through Chances Dances for queer artists of color.[13]

In 2013, artist Edie Fake had the exhibition titled, "Memory Palaces" in Chicago and paid tribute to five artists and friends that had died, one of which was Mark Aguhar.[14]

The 2015–2016 exhibition, Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics, started the tour at Cooper Union and was created in order to explore the meaning of trans and what defines transgender aesthetic in many different forms of artwork.[15][16] Other transgender artists and archieves participating in this exhibition included: Niv Acosta, Math Bass, Effy Beth, Justin Vivian Bond, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Vaginal Davis, Zackary Drucker, Chloe Dzubilo, Reina Gossett with Sasha Wortzel, Juliana Huxtable, Greer Lankton, Pierre Molinier, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Flawless Sabrina, Buzz Slutzky, and Chris Vargas with the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art.[15]

Her poem "Litanies to My Heavenly Brown Body" was widely circulated after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.[2][17][18]

In the publication "Proximity: On the Work of Mark Aguhar," (2015), writer Roy Pérez examines Aguhar's drawings, videos, live acts, and writings as performances of closeness, and as critiques of racism, transphobia, and fat phobia. Pérez highlights the complexity of Aguhar's queerness and "not wanting to form attachments within the dominant normative society".[19]

Select exhibitions
  • 2009: No Lone Zone, Creative Research Lab, Austin, Texas[20]
  • 2009: New American Talent, The Twenty-fourth Exhibition, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Contemporary Art for Texas, Austin, Texas
  • 2010: Ideas of Mountains, Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, Texas[21]
  • 2011: M4M, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas[22]
  • 2012: Torch Song, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, Illinois[23]
  • 2012: The Dragon is the Frame Performances, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, Illinois[5][24]
  • 2015: Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics, 41 Cooper Gallery, The Cooper Union, New York City, New York[15]
  • 2016: Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics, Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, Illinois[25]
  • 2016: Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania[26]
  • 2019: "Nobody Promised You Tomorrow": Art 50 Years After Stonewall, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York[27][28]
gollark: Cool as potatOS?
gollark: If we have enough cabling then the network will be able to route around Terra.
gollark: Good.
gollark: Maybe just make a grid entirely of cables a few blocks down.
gollark: Try making redundant links.

References
  1. Kwak, Young Joon (2016-07-11). "Mark Aguhar". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
  2. Laing, Olivia (2016-06-16). "On the Orlando shooting and a sense of erasure". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
  3. "The work and death of Mark Aguhar". DailyXtra. 2012-03-13. Retrieved 2018-06-15.
  4. Prizmich, Mikey (25 February 2015). "Accept trans youth and value their diverse experiences". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 12 March 2015.
  5. Eler, Alicia (11 January 2013). "Homage to a City's Queer History". Hyperallergenic. Hyperallergic Media, Inc. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  6. Vallarta, MT (2018-03-13). "'I'd Rather Be Beautiful Than Male': Remembering the Radical Art of Mark Aguhar". Broadly, Vice Magazine. Retrieved 2018-06-15.
  7. Garza, Evan J. (12 March 2015). "Why Be Ugly When U Can Be Beautiful?". Hyperallergenic. Hyperallergic Media, Inc. Retrieved 12 March 2015.
  8. "Mark Aguhar". Filipino/American Artist Directory. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  9. "Impossible Choreographies". The Destroyer Magazine. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
  10. "BLOGGING FOR BROWN GURLS". calloutqueen-blog.tumblr.com. Archived from the original on 2016-01-20. Retrieved 2017-02-13.
  11. Sandoval, Travis (16 March 2012). "Mark Aguhar 1987-2012". Austinist. Gothamist LLC. Retrieved 12 March 2015.
  12. "Mark Aguhar's Obituary". Legacy.com. Houston Chronicle. March 2012. Retrieved 2015-09-04.
  13. "Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant Now Accepting Applications". Chicago Artists Resource. 2015. Archived from the original on 2018-07-15. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  14. "Homage to a City's Queer History". Hyperallergic. 2013-01-11. Retrieved 2019-11-06.
  15. "Bring Your Own Body: Transgender Between Archives and Aesthetics". The Cooper Union. 2015. Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  16. "explore the meaning of trans". I-d. Vice Magazine. 2015-10-15. Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  17. Editor, Carolina Moreno; L, The Huffington Post Gabriela; Editor, azuri Saltos Photo; Post, The Huffington (2016-06-15). "LGBTQ Latinxs And Allies Share Heartfelt Messages In Honor Of Orlando Shooting Victims". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2017-01-09.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  18. "The work and death of Mark Aguhar". Xtra. 2012-03-13. Retrieved 2018-06-15.
  19. "Trap Door, On the Contradictions of Trans Visibility". Topical Cream. 2018-04-16. Retrieved 2018-06-15.
  20. "CRL EXHIBITION: NO LONE ZONE". 2009. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  21. Brenner, Wayne Alan (29 January 2010). "'Ideas of Mountains' This Creative Research Lab exhibition is a peak of no small aesthetic excitement". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  22. "On View January 28, 2011 – March 12, 2011". Lawndale Art Center. 2011. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  23. Tamarkin, David (20 March 2012). "In memoriam: Mark Aguhar, 1987–2012". TimeOut Chicago. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  24. "Exhibitions - Gallery 400". gallery400.uic.edu. Archived from the original on 2017-03-11. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  25. Waxman, Lori (2016-01-27). "She, He, They, Hir: Transgender art and artists at Columbia College". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
  26. "Bring Your Own Body". Bring Your Own Body. Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  27. Leonhardt, Andrea (2018-12-06). "These Are 4 Brooklyn Museum Exhibits to Look Forward to in 2019". BK Reader. Retrieved 2019-01-30.
  28. Cotter, Holland (2019-05-30). "Stonewall: When Resistance Became Too Loud to Ignore". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-09-19.
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