Zoe Walsh

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 États-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), PM/AM Gallery (London, UK),
and Alfred University Fosdick-Nelson Gallery (Alfred, NY). 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, Artillery Magazine, 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.