Kalup Linzy

Artist lecture Thursday, November 07, 2013 7PM
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
A Memorial for Taiwan, 2013 | Video still of performance

Brooklyn based Kalup Linzy is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes videos, performances and music. His satirical narratives – inspired by soap operas, telenovelas and Hollywood melodramas – deal with race, sexuality, gender, class, and the art world.

Serving as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and actor, he performs (often in drag) a series of memorable, defiant characters; he has been described as the heir to artists and performers as diverse as Cindy Sherman, RuPaul and John Waters. Simultaneously salacious and poignant, Linzy’s works fuse dramatic intensity with melodramatic irony and gut-busting comedy.

In the summer of 2010, he appeared on the long running ABC soap opera General Hospital alongside James Franco in a storyline that incorporated performance art. Linzy has released three full length albums and two EPs. His latest project, Romantic Loner (2012/13), includes an album, a feature film, two short films, live performances and an ongoing series of collages.

Linzy’s work has been shown in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA/PS1, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In 2011, he was featured in the production Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera Installation presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.


Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.