As our country slowly emerges from the trauma and devastation that the pandemic has left on the queer art community of San Francisco, Madison Young has opened the doors of a new home for queer artists and filmmakers – The Arbor, a new art gallery and screening room reinvigorating the Mission District with queer art, performance, and film screenings once again

MEN IN ROPE 

The inaugural art exhibition, Men In Rope, is a mythical photographic exhibition featuring Internationally regarded artist, Midori. 

Midori’s dramatic photographic images are the result of her collaborations with queer and gay men in the aughts. She worked with her photographic subjects to bring forth fantasies and narratives that made them the heroes (or villains) of their own stories, saying “I wanted to put dreams into form. I was both the interpreter and witness.”

These fantastical photographic narratives fill the walls of the gallery, windows into the masculine and mythic, hinting at stories bigger than our own.

WHEN

Exhibit
September 22 – October 30th

Opening Reception
September 22 7:00-9:00 pm

Closing Reception
November 5 4:00-6:00 pm

WHERE

The Arbor Gallery
465 S. Van Ness Ave
San Francisco, CA 94103
(Google Map)

ABOUT THE CURATOR – MADISON YOUNG

Madison Young is a sexual revolutionary who has been smashing stigma in the media for two decades, across multiple mediums and platforms including several critically-acclaimed books, their one womxn off-Broadway show, Reveal All Fear Nothing, and directing, hosting and producing the documentary television series, Submission Possible, for Revry TV. 

Young brings their 18 years of experience as a pioneer in the feminist porn movement, along with their award-winning filmmaking and writing talents, to create in a way that reflects the emotional nuance and authentic vulnerability that has become a signature of Young’s work. 

Young has been featured on HBO’s Real Sex and has been profiled for their expertise in feminism, erotic film, and sexuality on Dateline NBC, MTV, Slutever on Viceland, Bravo TV, Alicia Menendez Tonight on Fusion TV, Canal Plus, The New York Times, Savage Love, BBC, Elle Magazine, and Elite Daily just to name a few.

The reach and impact of Young’s writing and filmmaking is deep and has garnered praises from celebrity icons including Margaret Cho, Dave Navarro, and Maggie Gyllenhall, as well as Yale University and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody.

Learn More: https://linktr.ee/TheRealMadisonYoung

ABOUT THE GALLERY -THE ARBOR

The Arbor is a brand new San Francisco art gallery and film screening room dedicated to amplifying the voices of queer and transgender narratives in film, television, and visual art. Located at 465 S. Van Ness Ave in San Francisco.

Keep an eye out for more information soon!

ABOUT THE ARTIST – MIDORI

Glue gun, glitter, antlers, and pig’s blood—as a 90’s club kid in San Francisco’s underground nightlife, Midori created costumes and performances using whatever she could get her hands on. At the same time, in a city ravaged by the AIDS pandemic, she began her studies and community service as a safer sex educator with the encouragement of Dr. Carol Queen and Dr. Robert Lawrence. Art, kink, and sex education weave through her life.

She is a queer Japanese American artist and sexologist living in San Francisco. In art, she is a self-taught artist exploring the intersection of performance, visual art, and social practice. Her work spans in size, from a pebble to an entire wing of a museum. She specializes in rescuing and repurposing mixed media and have worked with a range of objects from industrial rope to taxidermy, old kimonos to mementos from queer sex workers.

In performance art, she stages long- and short-term endurance work blending theater, movement, and audience participation involving interactive materials. She has expanded to using Zoom as a participatory art-making medium.

Midori’s work has been shown at San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Leslie Lohman Museum, SoMArts, Das Arts Amsterdam, Gorilla Gallery Oaxaca, Root Division, Femina Potens, among others. Sainted by The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as “Saint Wild Side Artiste of the Ties That Bind” 2007 Active member of Asian American Women Artist AssociationAwarded 2022 Humanitarian Award by the American Association of Sex Educators Counselors and Therapists (AASECT)