Contact Information: jamee@jameecrusan.com
QUEER EXHAUSTION DEFINED:
My theory of queer exhaustion names the stressful dialectic of social and political visibility and invisibility as experienced by queer and trans individuals in contemporary culture of the United States. I consider queer exhaustion a product of the struggle between self-erasure and self-abnegation driven by continually negotiating hegemonic histories, desires, and experiences. In self-erasure, one erases parts of themselves; in self-abnegation, one rejects parts of themselves. The negotiation between invisibility and visibility requires those outside heteronormative constructs to pivot on a dime for their safety. This continual swivel and whirl creates disorientation and triggers exhaustion.
Crusan’s interests combine materiality, process, and a precise sense of craft, industrial labor, performance, and endurance. Cyanotypes, casting, performative lectures, and mind mapping culminate in a theory of queer exhaustion. This exploration of emotional and physical labor speaks of the ambivalence of objecthood and its traces.
Using life events as an inspiration for work, Crusan uses media ranging from video, installation, photography, and sculpture. The diaristic tone within the work allows for viewers to identify with the troubles of traumatic relationship breakdowns, unavoidable melancholy, and the nonsensical nature of it all.
Crusan puts contemporary takes on love, queer desire, queer exhaustion, astrology, and the metaphysical in conversation with the traces and marks that a vulnerable, intimate experience leaves on those involved.
If it doesn’t scare us even a little bit, then it lacks the ability to be that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change our lives for the better. Loss is something we have all experienced at one time or another in many different forms and within these realms a collective “we” can be found. We are attached to others, to our bodies, and exposed to each other, and at risk for losing these attachments.
Crusan graduated from the California College for the Arts in 2017 with a MFA in Studio Practice and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies and the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2013 with BFAs in both Photography and Graphic Design.
CV
Education
2017 Masters of Fine Art Studio Art California College for the Arts
2017 Masters of Art Visual & Cultural Studies California California College for the Arts
2013 Bachelors of Fine Art Photography Cleveland Institute of Art
2013 Bachelors of Fine Art Graphic Design Cleveland Institute of Art
2001 Bachelors of Science Media Communications Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Group Exhibitions
2020 The John and Geraldine Lily Museum of Art (upcoming)
2020 Un/Raveling: A Collective Mourning, Harold J Miossi Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA
2019 Betwix: queer midnight/indigo multiverse, CTRL SHFT, Oakland, CA
2019 Female Trouble 2, CULT aimee frieberg exhibitions, San Francisco, CA
2019 Tipping Point: Love Letters, Portals and Rebellions, Dream Farm Commons, Oakland, CA
2018 A History of Violence, SOMArts, San Francisco, CA
2018 Trans-versing Sites: Standing Rock and Spiral Jetty, Asheville, NC
2018 Futility, Aggregate Space Gallery, Oakland, CA
2017 Misfit Maker Factory, Root Division, San Francisco, CA
2017 Introductions, Root Division, San Francisco, CA (juried by Patricia Cariño Valdez, Kira Lyons, Hesse McGraw)
2017 Orium, Aggregate Space Gallery, Oakland, CA
2017 Trans-versing Sites: Standing Rock and Spiral Jetty, Hubbell Street Gallery, San Francisco CA
2017 Text Tales: Narratively in Cloth and Thread, College Ave Galleries, Oakland, CA
2016 You, Me and This Other Thing, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2016 Creative Labor: Queer It Yourself, SOMArt, San Francisco, CA
2016 Ethereal Dreamers Never Lie, Barclay Simpson Award Exhibition, Oliver Art Center, Oakland CA
2016 Bury My Heart Apart From Me, MFA Thesis Exhibition, Fused Space, San Francisco, CA
2016 Encounters: Portraits and Identity, Embark Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Gender in Translation, Nave, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2015 AICAD Symposium - Exploring Science in the Studio, San Francisco, CA
2015 Swan Day, Firehouse Collective: The Lottie Rose House, Oakland, CA
2013 Spotlight Exhibition, Cleveland Print Room, Cleveland OH
2013 BFA Thesis Exhibition, Cleveland Institute of Art Bachelors of Fine Art, Cleveland, OH
2013 Student Independent Exhibition, Reinberger Gallery Cleveland, OH
2013 A Compilation, Reinberger Gallery, Cleveland, OH
Publications
2019 Art Journal, Fall Issue, Vol 78, Issue 3, Hopeless Acts of Mourning, Philadelphia, PA
2018 Refract Journal, The Double Edge of Visibility and Invisibility, Santa Cruze, CA
2018 “New Takes,” Bree Lamb, Art Practical, San Francisco, CA
2018 “New Takes,” Adrianne Elise Tarver, Art Practical, San Francisco, CA
2017 “New Takes,” Jel Martinez, Art Practical, San Francisco, CA
2017 “New Takes,” Royce Allen Hobbs, Art Practical, San Francisco, CA
2017 “Sightlines,” The Double Edge of Visibility and Invisibility: Cassils and Queer Exhaustion California
College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2013 Cleveland Museum of Art DIY Photographers and Book, Cleveland Ohio
Public Panels/Presentations
2019 Hopeless Acts of Mourning: A Workshop, CTRL SHFT, Oakland, CA
2019 Hopeless Acts of Mourning: A Workshop, Dream Farm Commons, Oakland, CA
2018 Guest Artist Lecturer San Francisco Institute of Art, San Francisco, CA
2018 3:1 Guest Critic California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2018 DC Queer Studies Symposium TRANS(form)ing Queer, Baltimore, MD
*2018 University of North Carolina Queer Studies Conference. Prisons, Borders, and Pipelines: toward a Queer abolitionist movement, Asheville, NC
2017 "Sightlines," The Double Edge of Visibility and Invisibility: Cassils and Queer Exhaustion, San Francisco, CA
2017 Guest Lecture, The Double Edge of Visibility and Invisibility: Cassils and Queer Exhaustion, Emerging Scholars, Queer Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA
2017 Thesis Presentation, The Double Edge of Visibility and Invisibility: Cassils and Queer Exhaustion, California College for the Arts, Graduate Visual and Critical Studies Symposium, San Francisco, CA
*2017 Songs of Insurrection: Reading and Auction for Standing Rock, MFA Writing studio, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
*2017 Guest Panelist with Frances Richard and Prima Sakuntabhai Trans-versing Sites: Standing Rock and Spiral Jetty, Hubbell Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Guest Critic, Senior Sculpture Seminar — Professor Allison Smith, California College for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2016 Peer Critic, MFA Fine Arts program, California College for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2015 Guest Lecture: Love is Dead: Mapping Queer Exhaustion and Desire, Gender in Translation, Nave,
San Francisco, CA
Awards/Grants/Fellowships
2020 Labor Residency, Santa Fe Institute of Art, Santa Fe, NM
2019 Methods of (Act)ing On, Hubbell Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2019 Dream Farm Commons, Oakland, CA
2017 Hubbell Street Gallery Micro Residency, San Francisco, CA
2016 California College for the ArtsTravel Grant, San Francisco, CA
2015 California College for the ArtsBarclay Simpson Award, San Francisco, CA
Commissions/Collections
2020 Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
2011 Oatey Company, Cleveland, OH (Corporate Collection)
2011 Mort Mendell, Cleveland, OH (Private Collection)
Professional Experience
2020-2021 - Professor at California College of the Arts (Studio and Research)
2017-2020 Facebook Project Manager and Producer
2017-2019 Facebook Teaching Artist
2018 Project Manager and Fabricator for Future ID’s in Alcatraz
2017 - 2020 Project Manager/Consultant/Fabricator for Artists (Ranu Mukjerhee, Jean Shin, Sanaz Mazanani, Ebtihal Shedid)
2017 Columnist for Art Practical San Francisco, Ca (New Takes)
2016 Teaching Assistant, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (Metal Techniques with Clay Jensen), Fall
2005-2009 Assistant Vice President HSBC Consumer Lending Department Cleveland, OH
2002-2005 Assistant Manager, American Eagle Outfitters, Indiana, PA
*Denotes Trans-versing Sites collaboration
“You are what I gain through this disorientation and loss. This is how the human comes into being, again and again, as that which we have yet to know. Lets face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not we’re missing something".
- Judith Butler Precarious Life
key words:
mourning
absence
Appalachia
survival tool
salt
undone by each other
souvenir
paradox of visibility
cyanotype
death
negotiate
ritual
shape shifting
diaristic
talisman
melancholy
breakdowns
metaphysical
marks
inside/outside
disorientation/orient
fairy
survival
lost at sea
banshee
true north
binding/unbinding/bound
internal/external
black and blue
longing
weight
Irish
queer desire
object hood
Sicilian
coal
industrial
craft
magick
endurance
astrology
traces
diaristic tone
trans
duplicity
material
place
queer
layered
psychic/physical/emotional labor
constructed
punctured
history
process
steel
recognition
attachment
pain
perception
narratives
complications
intersections
tensions
beautiful
tough
bronze
sadness
relationships
vulnerability
dichotomies
visibility/invisibility
loss
grief
socio economic
labor
working class
exhaustion
making/unmaking
tender
violence
guns
absurd