Background
Nayland Blake was born in 1960, in New York City, New York, United States.
1980
Nayland Blake
2007
Nayland Blake
2008
Nayland Blake
2015
Nayland Blake
2017
Nayland Blake
2018
Nayland Blake
2018
Nayland Blake
30 Campus Rd, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504, United States
During the period from 1978 till 1982, Nayland studied at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where they received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
24700 McBean Pkwy, Valencia, CA 91355, United States
In 1982, Blake enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1984.
Nayland Blake as a child
Nayland Blake with his parents
Nayland Blake as a child
Nayland Blake
From left to right: Philip Horvitz and Nayland Blake.
(This work represents an unprecedented look at a moving ph...)
This work represents an unprecedented look at a moving photographic series, that chronicles the gay communities of Los Angeles and San Francisco from 1969 to 1972.
https://www.amazon.com/Anthony-Friedkin-Essay-Museums-Francisco/dp/0300206372
2014
Nayland Blake was born in 1960, in New York City, New York, United States.
During the period from 1978 till 1982, Nayland studied at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where they received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In 1982, Blake enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1984.
In the early 1980's, after studying at Bard College and California Institute of the Arts, Blake moved to San Francisco and got involved in the city’s art and kink scenes. They began exhibiting their own work in 1985.
In 1996, the artist returned to his native New York City and since 2002, they have been employed as chair of the International Center of Photography and Bard College’s joint Master of Fine Art program in advanced photographic studies at the International Center of Photography School.
In 1998, the artist produced his work, entitled "Feeder 2". It was a log cabin, made of gingerbread squares, fitted to a steel frame. When the work was displayed at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, visitors furtively nibbled off bits and pieces of the cabin's interior walls. The same year, they shot a video, titled "Gorge", showing the artist, sitting shirtless, and being hand-fed an enormous amount of food for an hour by a shirtless black man from behind. In 2000, they released a video, entitled "Starting Over", showing them dancing in a huge bunny suit. In 2009, a live version of "Gorge" was staged, in which audience members fed Blake.
As for exhibitions, the artist has participated in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and the 1993 Venice Biennale. Their selected solo-exhibitions include "Inscription", XS Gallery, Western Nevada Community College, Carson City (1987), "Stoney End", Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City (1993), "April Hare", Gallery Paule Anglim (present-day Anglim Gilbert Gallery), San Francisco (1997), "Double Fantasy", Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City (2000), "Nayland Blake, Some Kind of Love: Performance Video 1989-2002", Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2003), "What the Whiskey Said, What the Sun is Saying", Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City (2008), "Negative Bunny", Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle (2015), "Workroom", The Garage, San Francisco (2017), among others.
The artist has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including "Assemblage '88: The Recontextualized Object", San Francisco Art Institute (1988), "Image World", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (1989), "Facing the Finish", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1991), "Gardens of Violence", Swiss Expo 02, Murten-Morat, Switzerland (2002), "Acts of Futility", Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington (2003), "Consider the Lobster", Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2009), "Living Apart Together", Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017), and many others.
In October 2017, Blake participated in the performance series "Crossing Object (inside Gnomen)", hosted by the New Museum in Manhattan.
Nayland has also acted as a curator. In 1995, they were co-curator, with Lawrence Rinder, of the landmark exhibition "In A Different Light" at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, the first museum exhibition to examine the impact of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer artists on contemporary art. In 2018, the artist curated "Tag: Proposals on Queer Play And The Ways Forward" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.
In addition, Blake has been on the faculty of Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and has taught at San Francisco Art Institute, California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Berkeley, Parsons School for Design, New York University, the School of Visual Arts and Harvard University Department of Visual and Environmental Studies.
Currently, Nayland lives and works in New York City, where the artist is a revered presence in the city’s vibrant art and cultural community, and a frequent presence at LGBTQ events.
(This work represents an unprecedented look at a moving ph...)
2014Heavily inspired by feminist and queer liberation movements, as well as subcultures, ranging from punk to kink, Blake's multidisciplinary practice considers the complexities of representation, particularly racial and gender identity; play and eroticism; and the subjective experience of desire, loss and power. The artist's sustained meditation on "passing" and duality as a queer, biracial (African-American and white) person is grounded in post-minimalist and conceptual approaches, made personal through an idiosyncratic array of materials (such as leather, medical equipment and food) and the tropes of fairy tales and fantasy.
For the last few years, Blake has opted to use "they/them/their" pronouns instead of the masculine "he/him/his" as a form of address. The decision was made partly in solidarity with those, whose gender expression does not fit a binary, as a nod toward a possible future of universal pronouns, that aren't loaded with social expectations. However, it also came from Blake's lifelong understanding of his own identity as a hybrid.
Philip Horvitz, a performance artist, writer, director and choreographer, was Blake's life partner. Philip died in 2005.