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Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts

 

 

CAN YOU SAVE SUPERMAN?

June 10, 2020 - December 1, 2020

Works by Jordan Eagles
Curated by Eric Shiner

Presented by:
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

With:
Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA), Visual AIDS, Blood Equality, GMHC, New York City AIDS Memorial, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, and The New York City HIV Planning Group

 
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Even with massive blood shortages during a global pandemic – the FDA continues discriminatory policies for donating blood and plasma based on sexual orientation. Can You Save Superman? is dynamic, responsive series by artist Jordan Eagles, whose ongoing cycle of art and activism addresses the stigma of queer blood and challenges these policies, in a new chapter of work guest curated by Andy Warhol scholar Eric Shiner.

For this series debuting during Pride Month, prior to World Blood Donor Day (June 14) and on view through World AIDS Day (Dec. 1), Eagles appropriates a vintage Superman comic book (Action Comics, 1971) in which the superhero, in an attempt to save his life, calls on the citizens of Metropolis for a mass blood transfusion.

The experience includes striking details, full-color photography, the preserved original comic book, and a haunting, first person essay by Shiner on Superman, the Black Power movement, the AIDS crisis, blood equality, and COVID-19, contextualizing and activating the viewing experience.

Jordan Eagles is a New York based artist who has been exploring the aesthetics and ethics of blood as an artistic medium since the late 1990s. The themes of his work vary depending on the series and source of the blood. Eagles' works made with donated blood from the LGBTQI+ community advocate for fair blood donation policy, anti-stigma and equality. His works created with animal blood from slaughterhouses address life cycle, corporeality, spirituality, and regeneration. Eagles' exhibitions, installations and public programs include The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, PA), Museum of the City of New York, Keith Haring Bathroom at The Center (New York), High Line (New York), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York), Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (Alabama), Science Gallery London and Melbourne, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Trinity Wall Street (New York), and American University Museum (Washington, D.C.). Eagles collaborated with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on NYC Blood Sure, and is a co-founder of Blood Equality.

Eric Shiner is Executive Director of Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. From 2011-2016, he was the director of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, after serving as the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the museum beginning in 2008. He was most recently the Artistic Director at White Cube Gallery in New York. Prior to that he served as the Senior Vice President of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's. Throughout these experiences, Eric has demonstrated his commitment to lead in ways that promote diversity, inclusion and social justice. He is president of the board of Visual AIDS and also serves on the board of City Of Asylum in Pittsburgh.

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