Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon

“Trigger is a vital reminder that identity politics, far from being a failure, as the right and left alike are quick to tell us, is alive, well, and getting on with changing the world.” ―Aruna D’Souza

The accompanying catalog for the New Museum’s exhibition Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon investigates gender’s place in contemporary art and culture at a moment of political upheaval and renewed culture wars. The exhibition features over 40 artists working across a variety of mediums and genres, including film, video, performance, painting and sculpture. Many embrace explicit pleasure and visual lushness as political strategies, and some deliberately reject or complicate overt representation, turning to poetic language, docufiction and abstraction to affirm ambiguities and reflect shifting physical embodiment. Among the artists included are Morgan Bassichis, Nayland Blake, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Vaginal Davis, ektor garcia, House of Ladosha, Candice Lin, Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith and Wu Tsang.

Trigger...continues the institution's legacy of presenting radical ideas on gender and sexuality. (Sara Roffino Cultured)

What’s incredibly refreshing and exciting about Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon is that it’s a queer art show that specifically seeks a space beyond a taxonomic obsession. (Alexis Clements Hyperallergic)

The goal is to inject the disruptive power of not-normal back into the discussion of difference at ta time when the edge of mainstream ganess has been dulled by the quest for assimilation. (The New York Times)

By positioning gender at the intersection of race, class, sexuality and disability, Trigger exposes deep ambiguities, curious contradictions and fundamental questions at the heart of life on earth. (Miss Rosen DAZED)