Lauren DeLand is a scholar of contemporary and modern art whose work intersects with feminist and queer theory, and considers strategically the politics of vision and visibility. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Performance Research and Criticism, and regularly in Art in America. Forthcoming pieces in 2018 include essays for Criticism and The Drama Review: TDR. Her curatorial activities with commercial and university galleries in Chicago and Minneapolis include her role on the curatorial team for Queer Forms, a series of multidisciplinary exhibitions and public programs honoring the contributions of Midwestern GLBTQ people to the history and culture of gay liberation in the United States. The exhibition will open at the Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota in 2019, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Fine Arts at Indiana University Northwest, where she also teaches courses in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Ron Athey’s 1994 Minneapolis Performance and the Anatomy of a Media Scandal
In a carefully researched dive into the archive of press materials surrounding performance artist Ron Athey’s 1994 Walker performance, queer scholar and art historian Lauren DeLand explores how the narrative around his work that came to dominate the national stage followed a set script. People believed to have AIDS became scapegoats for a nation gripped by fear. While DeLand addresses the artist’s visceral and moving performance practice, she offers a cogent look at how his work fit into a larger narrative of fear, anxiety, and homophobia that drove press coverage of HIV and AIDS in the early 1990s.