“Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA” Opens Sept 9

Anthony Friedkin, Jim and Mundo, Montebello, East Los Angeles, 1972. Gelatin silver print. 11 x 14 in. Morris Kight Collection, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries. Courtesy of Anthony Friedkin. 

Organized by ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA maps the intersections and collaborations among a network of queer Chicano artists and their artistic collaborators from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. This period was bookended on one side by the Chicano Moratorium and the gay liberation and feminist movements and on the other by the AIDS crisis. Queer Networks in Chicano LA marks the first historical consideration of these artists in the context of broader artistic and cultural movements: mail art, the rise of alternative print media, fashion culture, punk music, and artists’ responses to the AIDS epidemic. The exhibition will be presented at the ONE Archives’ gallery in West Hollywood and the nearby MOCA Pacific Design Center gallery.