Joy Episalla is a multidisciplinary artist who works in the interstices between photography, film, and sculpture. They are also an AIDS activist who advocates for queer and trans visibility. These roles converge in Episalla’s work as one of four original core members of the queer art collective fierce pussy—alongside Nancy Brooks Brody (1962–2023), Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka. Working collaboratively, they draw on their individual artistic practices to encourage political agency.
Episalla’s film As long as there’s you, As long as there’s me (2023) likewise brings together important strands of their expanded practice. A travelogue composed from moments of performance/non-performance filmed by Episalla over the last 18 years, the film evinces their artistic and activist sensibility, creating and sustaining community over time, with moments captured through close observation.
Special guest Mx Justin Vivian Bond, who appears in the film, will open the evening with a short musical performance. Following the screening, Episalla will be joined in conversation with artist and curator Jo-ey Tang and Stuart Comer, MoMA’s Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance.
This program coincides with the exhibition arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified: Chapter Eight curated by Jo-ey Tang at Participant Inc.