Devan Shimoyama is no stranger to excess. The artist crafts his own Black, queer mythology in bright colours and lavishly embellished surfaces. Within his visual lexicon, Shimoyama employs materials like building blocks to construct a space of queer transcendence: glitter, rhinestones, sequins, and fabric.
In his first public talk in the UK, Shimoyama will discuss a range of work that weaves together popular culture, mythological archetypes, and personal narrative. Shimoyama’s Barbershop Project invited members of the public to have their hair cut in a joyous space surrounded by paintings of himself, loved ones, and imagined portraits that reframe the hyper-masculine spaces of his youth. His swing sculptures and hoodies are tributes to victims of racialised gun violence and use silk flowers to evoke spontaneous memorials, celebrating life between permanence and impermanence. The Tarot Series reimagines the twenty-two Major Arcana and takes the artist and the viewer on a “Fool’s journey” via the divinatory cards.
These works seek a through-line between spiritual traditions encompassing his Baptist Christian upbringing, hybrid Black diasporic religions, Egyptian mythology, and more. Nods to popular culture suffuse Shimoyama’s fantasy world, from music (the Princess of R&B, Aaliyah), to poetry (the Jamaican writer Safiya Sinclair), to anime (the television series and manga Sailor Moon). Through these references, he transforms sites of pain into spaces of reverence and remembrance. From folklore to fantasy world-building, Shimoyama amplifies Black queer joy.
Organised by Professor Jo Applin, Alex Bispham, and Dr Pia Gottschaller, as part of the Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas.
Speakers:
Devan Shimoyama (b. 1989, Philadelphia) is a multimedia artist based in Pittsburgh, PA, where he has also taught at Carnegie Mellon University. His exhibition Shift is currently on view at Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum. In the United States, his work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Ulrich Museum of Art, Kavi Gupta Gallery, and the Andy Warhol Museum, as well as at the Kunstpalais Erlangen, CAC Málaga, the Serlachius Museum, Mänttä, and VETA Galeria in Europe.
Jo Applin is Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, her particular emphasis is on American and British art since 1945. She has been Director of the Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas since 2022, and her research addresses questions of abstraction, feminism, sexuality, and subjectivity. Applin is the author of Lee Lozano: Not Working (Yale University Press, 2018), Alison Wilding (Lund Humphries, 2018), Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America (Yale University Press, 2012), and Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field (Afterall and MIT Press, 2012). Her most recent book, Lee Lozano: Not Working, was awarded the Suzanne and James Mellor Book Prize from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. She is currently working on a book about art and ageing.
Alex Bispham is a PhD student at the Courtauld Institute. Working on alternative spirituality, she is seeking to define a queer theory of materials. Devan Shimoyama is among the artists being examined in her thesis, which explores spiritual-artistic practices that disrupt perceived hierarchies of matter/idea, reason/emotion, and high/low art. Alex previously held positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and Hôtel Drouot.
Pia Gottschaller is a Reader in Technical Art History at the Courtauld Institute, London, where she teaches across art history, conservation and curating. Prior appointments include Senior Research Specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles; paintings conservator at Tate, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Associate Curator at Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. She is the recipient of a number of research grants and scholarships, most recently from the Getty Foundation (2021). Her monographs, edited volumes and essays focus on modern and contemporary European, US- and Latin American artists and movements, and her most recent book Unruly Tools: Contemporary Artists and the Reinvention of Painting examines the role of non-conventional tools in global artistic practice.
