Zoe Walsh uses a queer lens to deconstruct notions of sexuality that are enshrined in Western culture, along with assumptions surrounding gender expression and identity—all of which are grafted onto the physical body. Walsh’s work forges an aesthetic of trans subjectivity that offers openings out of the entrapments of the gender binary. Drawing from Warhol’s use of the silkscreened multiple as a method of deconstruction, Walsh addresses entanglements of embodiment and desire in spectatorship of gay male pornography, recently reworking late 1970s photographs produced by Falcon Studios. The erotically stylized figures at the site of a swimming pool are transformed through SketchUp and Photoshop, eventually appearing as stripped-down silhouettes in the paintings. Visual pleasure is sacred to Walsh’s work and linked to ideas of spectatorship and a desire to create space for trans identifications.
Zoe Walsh (b. 1989, Washington D.C.) received their BA from Occidental College and MFA from Yale University. They have held solo exhibitions at the Fondation des EĢtats-Unis (Paris), M+B Gallery (Los Angeles), and Pieter (Los Angeles, CA). Walsh’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in group shows at USC Fisher Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), Atkinson Gallery (Santa Barbara, CA), Peppers Art Gallery (Redlands, CA), Felix Art Fair, M+B (Los Angeles, CA), Usdan Gallery (Bennington, VT), La Maison des Arts (Malakoff, France), Alfred University Fosdick-Nelson Gallery (Alfred, NY), Null/Void Gallery (London, UK), and Occasionals Gallery (London, UK). Walsh was nominated for the prestigious Emerging Artist Grant from Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and they were awarded the Al Held Foundation Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Their paintings have been written about in Art Matters, What’s on Los Angeles, Cultured Magazine, Vice, LA Weekly, The Occidental Weekly, and Lum Art Zine. Zoe Walsh lives and works in Los Angeles.