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In Us Is Heaven explores queer futures and radical aesthetics at Southern Guild
Chiffon Thomas' work on view at Southern Guild
Image: Courtesy of Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles
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In Us Is Heaven explores queer futures and radical aesthetics at Southern Guild

The group exhibition at Southern Guild, Los Angeles, brings together interdisciplinary artists from Africa and North America confronting the politics of the queer body.

by Southern Guild
Published on : Jun 07, 2025

South Africa-based gallery Southern Guild presents an ambitious and multifaceted group exhibition at its Melrose Hill gallery in Los Angeles called In Us is Heaven. Showcasing works by interdisciplinary artists from Africa and North America, the exhibition explores the expansive terrain of Queer identity, aesthetics and community, contending that 'Queer art is not marginal'. The show, on view from May 16 – September 6, 2025, brings together an impressive roster of contemporary artists, including Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, Rich Mnisi, Athi-Patra Ruga, Oluseye, Brett Charles Seiler, Alex Hedison, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Qualeasha Wood, Chiffon Thomas and several more. Each contributes a unique voice, medium and sensibility, ranging across photography, painting, tapestry and sculpture art

The art exhibition’s title draws inspiration from Cuban-American theorist José Esteban Muñoz's concept of "Queer utopia", suggesting a vision of being that exists within reach, embedded in our emotional, political and spiritual lives. In Us is Heaven insists on Queerness as lived resistance, world-building and a radical act of love.

Gender as performance and the aesthetics of excess emerge as recurring themes across the works of Jody Paulsen, Rich Mnisi and Queezy Babaz. Mnisi's hyper-masculine bodybuilder evokes both vulnerability and the pressures of bodily perfection within Queer masculinities, while Paulsen's sumptuous felt collage reimagines Venus of Urbino through a lens of camp and indulgence. Babaz and Jody Brand both honour pageantry as Queer ritual—Babaz through digital collage referencing drag culture and Indigenous heritage and Brand through photographic tributes to Black femme resilience.

Photography plays a key role throughout the exhibition, reframed as a tool of reclamation. South African artist Zanele Muholi and California-based educator Catherine Opie wield it as a form of resistance and visibility. Muholi's Miss Lesbian I, Amsterdam and Opie's Portraits series recast portraiture as a space of chosen family, kinship and solidarity, resisting both heteronormative frameworks and nationalist ideals.

Additionally, Brett Charles Seiler's Rainbow Flag mural and large-scale painting, Shakil and Laura (To Rub Hurt Feelings), offer intimate renderings of friendship and Queer love. This also resounds through Simon Haas' graphite drawing, while visual artists Ambrose Rhapsody Murray and Chloe Chiasson reimagine the iconography of American masculinity through a Queer lens.

Ghana-based Araba Opoku's meditative abstractions and American textile artist Qualeasha Wood's digital-weaving hybrids both build dreamlike spaces for identity-making beyond societal surveillance. Showcases by Oluseye and Athi-Patra Ruga interrogate colonial Christianity and its enduring imposition of binary gender systems in African contexts. Oluseye's photographic series Steve reimagines biblical allegory through Queer embodiment, confronting religious doctrine with acts of self-reclamation. Meanwhile, Ruga's mythic tapestry casts his avatar as a gender-fluid saint, disrupting conventional narratives of desire and faith.

Defying reductive representation, In Us is Heaven speaks of Queer life as fluid, fierce and deeply communal. Running parallel to Muholi's solo exhibition Faces and Phases 19 at the art gallery and in celebration of international Pride Month, the exhibition is supported by an inclusive programme of talks and events—affirming that Queer art is not only present, but necessary.

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STIR STIRpad In Us Is Heaven explores queer futures and radical aesthetics at Southern Guild

In Us Is Heaven explores queer futures and radical aesthetics at Southern Guild

The group exhibition at Southern Guild, Los Angeles, brings together interdisciplinary artists from Africa and North America confronting the politics of the queer body.

by Southern Guild | Published on : Jun 07, 2025