PATRICE APHRODITE HELMAR

BIRD ON A WIRE

September 7 - November 3, 2018

Opening Reception Friday, September 7, 6-9pm

Gaa Gallery Provincetown is pleased to exhibit BIRD ON A WIRE, an exhibition of new photographs by New York-based artist Patrice Aphrodite Helmar. BIRD ON A WIRE opens on Friday, September 7, and is on view through November 3.

The exhibition is a collection of black and white portraits that boast a tactile bridge between subject and viewer, as they explore desire, mortality, and the classical forms of love: storge, philia, eros, agape. Animated by empathic and sustained considerations of the human gaze and its accompanying complexities, BIRD ON A WIRE frames its characters—many of whom are queer, trans, or gender fluid—in indoor and outdoor spaces that carry traditional suggestions of safety: the bedroom, the garden, the boudoir. With these photographs, Helmar breaks keen communicative ground regarding social vulnerability and the noble ferocity of alternative, individual identities.

Patrice Aphrodite Helmar (b. 1981, Juneau, Alaska) is a photographer, curator, and a current visiting professor at Pratt Institute and Columbia University. Helmar's work has appeared widely, including exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, National Museum of Iceland, Houston Center for Photography, New York Photo Festival, BOSI Contemporary, Fisher Landau Center, Judith Charles Gallery, and the Anchorage Museum. Helmar was a nominee for the Rema Hort Mann and Gordon Parks Prize, and a recipient of a Rasmuson Foundation Fellowship. Her work is included in public and private collections including the Centre Pompidou Library, Rasmuson Foundation, Juneau Douglas City Museum, Duke University, and the Barnard Zine Library.

BIRD ON A WIRE will open on Friday, September 7, with an opening reception from 6-9pm.