CASSILS 2020 CASSILS 2020 SHORT BIO CASSILS is a gender nonconforming visual artist working in live performance, sculpture, photography, installation, sound design and film. Contemplating the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival, Cassils makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, their work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment. Solo exhibitions include Banff Center for the Arts, Perth Museum of Contemporary Art, Perth, Australia; The Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; MU Eindhoven, Netherlands; and Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada. Cassils’s work has been featured at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, AZ; Oakland Museum of California, CA; Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany; MUCEM, Marseille, France; Deutsches Historisches Museum and the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany; MUCA Roma, Mexico City, Mexico; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; and Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica. Cassils’s performances have been featured at The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; The National Theatre, London, UK; ANTI Contemporary Performance Festival, Kuopio, Finland; Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Austria; Dark Mofo, MONA, Hobart, Tasmania; and Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. Cassils’s films have premiered at Sundance International Film Festival, Park City, UT; OUTFest, Los Angeles, CA; Institute for Contemporary Art, London, UK; Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands; M+, at West Kowloon, Hong Kong, China; and Outsider Festival, Austin, TX for Early Career Retrospective: Cassils. Cassils is the recipient of the USA Artist Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, the inaugural ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, California Community Foundation Grant, Creative Capital Award, and Visual Artist Fellowship from the Canada Council of the Arts. Cassils’s work has been featured in The New York Times,Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired, The Guardian, Art Forum, and academic journals such as Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Places Journal, and October. Cassils is the subject of the monograph Cassils, published by MU Eindhoven in 2015; and is the subject of a new catalogue published by The Station Museum of Contemporary Art. CASSILS 2020 Artist: Cassils SHAME #DEFUNDHATE Los Angeles Geo Group Headquarters, July 3, 2020 Performance Still: Robin Black, Part of In Plain Sight a coalition of 80 artists fighting immigrant detention and the culture of incarceration conceived of by Cassils and rafa esparza LINK TO IN PLAIN SIGHT TRAILER CASSILS 2020 Artist: Patrice Cullors CARE NOT CAGES Los Angeles County Jail, July 3, 2020 Performance Still: Chris Mastro, Part of In Plain Sight a coalition of 80 artists fighting immigrant detention and the culture of incarceration conceived of by Cassils and rafa esparza CASSILS 2020 Artist: Bamby Salcedo STOP CRIMMIGRATION NOW Los Angeles Field Office, July 3, 2020 Performance Still: David McNew, Part of In Plain Sight a coalition of 80 artists fighting immigrant detention and the culture of incarceration conceived of by Cassils and rafa esparza CASSILS 2020 Cassils Alchemic No. 1, 2017 photo: Cassils with Robin Black CASSILS 2020 Cassils Alchemic No. 5, 2017 photo: Cassils with Robin Black CASSILS 2020 Cassils Alchemic No. 3, 2017 photo: Cassils with Robin Black CASSILS 2020 Cassils Alchemic No. 2, 2017 photo: Cassils with Robin Black CASSILS 2020 Cassils Resilience of the 20% Melt/Carve/Forge, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia), 2016 LINK TO MONUMENT PUSH TRAILER CASSILS 2020 Cassils Resilience of the 20% Melt/Carve/Forge, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia), 2016 CASSILS 2020 Cassils Resilience of the 20% Monumental, Feldman Gallery, NY, 2017 CASSILS 2020 Cassils Pissed, Installation Image No. 9 Monumental, Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC, 2017 photo: Cassils with Vince Ruvolo LINK TO VICE NEWS / HBO COVERAGE CASSILS 2020 Cassils Solutions Installation No. 10 Solutions, Station Museum, Houston, Texas, 2018 photo: Cassils with Alejandro Santiago CASSILS 2020 Cassils Portrait Pissed: Collection Day, Los Angeles, 2017 photo: Robyn Beck CASSILS 2020 Cassils Becoming An Image, Performance Still No. 1 National Theater Studio, SPILL Festival, London, 2013 photo: Cassils with Manuel Vason LINK TO BECOMING AN IMAGE TRAILER CASSILS 2020 Cassils Becoming An Image, Performance Still No. 3 Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth International Performance Festival, 2019 photo: Cassils with Manuel Vason CASSILS 2020 Cassils Becoming An Image, Performance Still No. 4 ONE National Archives, Transactivations, Los Angeles, 2012 photo: Cassils with Eric Charles CASSILS 2020 Cassils Becoming An Image, Performance Still No. 2 Incendiary, MU, Eindoven, Netherlands, 2015 photo: Cassils with Rem Van Den Bosch CASSILS 2020 Cassils Inextinguishable Fire, No. 4 National Theater Studio, SPILL Festival, London, 2015 photo: Cassils with Guido Mencari LINK TO INEXTINGUISHABLE FIRE TRAILER CASSILS 2020 Cassils Inextinguishable Fire, No. 8 National Theater Studio, SPILL Festival, London, 2015 photo: Cassils with Guido Mencari CASSILS 2020 Cassils Encapsulated Breaths, Installation Image No. 1 Solutions, Stantion Museum, Houston, Texas, 2018 photo: Cassils with Alejandro Santiago CASSILS 2020 Cassils Encapsulated Breaths, Installation Image No. 7 Solutions, Stantion Museum, Houston, Texas, 2018 photo: Cassils with Alejandro Santiago CASSILS 2020 Cassils Tiresias, Video Still No. 6 Performance for Camera, 2013 photo: Cassils with Clover Leary LINK TO TIRESIAS TRAILER CASSILS 2020 Cassils Tiresias, Video Still No. 7 Performance for Camera, 2013 photo: Cassils with Clover Leary CASSILS 2020 Cassils Advertisement: Homage to Benglis, 2011 photo: Cassils with Robin Black LINK TO FAST TWITCH // SLOW TWITCH CASSILS 2020 Cassils Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, Timelapse (Front), 2011 Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, Timelapse (Back), 2011 Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, Timelapse (Right), 2011 Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, Timelapse (Left), 2011 9/2/2020 David J. Getsy on Cassils - Artforum International 9/2/2020CASSILS David J. Getsy on Cassils - Artforum International 2020 PRESS TABLE OF CONTENTS PRINT FEBRUARY 2018 SLANT CASSILS TABLE OF CONTENTS PRINT FEBRUARY 2018 SLANT CASSILS Cassils, Fountain, 2017. Performance view, September 16, 2017, Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. Background: Cassils, PISSED, 2017. Photo: Vince Ruvolo. MAKE NO MISTAKE: Cassils’s work comes from rage. PISSED, the centerpiece of their exhibition “Monu-mental”at Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York this past autumn, Cassils,testifie Fountains to tha,t 2017 ang.e Performancer. Exhibite dview, as aSeptember massive 16,gla 2017,ss cu bRonalde con Feldmantaining Gallery,two h uNewndr York.ed gallons of Background: Cassils, PISSED, 2017. Photo: Vince Ruvolo. https://www.artforum.com/print/201802/cassils-73661 1/11 MAKE NO MISTAKE: Cassils’s work comes from rage. PISSED, the centerpiece of their exhibition “Monu-mental”at Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York this past autumn, testifies to that anger. Exhibited as a massive glass cube containing two hundred gallons of https://www.artforum.com/print/201802/cassils-73661 1/11 9/2/2020CASSILS David J. Getsy on Cassils - Artforum International 2020 PRESS the artist’s urine surrounded by the containers used to collect and carry it, PISSED addressed a transgender political struggle via a formal language at once confrontational and uncompromisingly austere.The work was sparked by the Trump administration’s spiteful, reactionary decision to rescindan Obama-era executive order that endorsed the rights of transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they know themselves to be. In response, Cassils began collecting all the urine they passed since that date. Refusing to keep out of sight, the artist undertook this months-long lifework as a confrontational transgression of the conventional lines between public and private, and the resulting installation offered a defiant material presence that resists the ways in which “privacy” has been weaponized against transgender lives. The fearmongering about bathrooms hinges on compelling trans people to make themselves visible as a means of surveilling and targeting them. This motive is masked as a defense of privacy, the terms of which are defined, narrowly, through the presumption that gender is merely (and strictly) binary, and through the belief that those binary genders need to be segregated because of the dangers of heterosexual lust. Any “right to privacy,” however, excludes anyone who does not fit binary preconceptions, and this exclusion is enforced by institutions that defend the myth that there are only two static genders. Bathrooms have become one of the most visible symbols and sites of the structural disenfranchisement of transgender people. PISSED makes the case that bodily processes are already public and political. Cassils speaks to the politics affecting transgender lives while striving to convey those politics without