Student Spotlight: Joseph Liatela

October 09, 2019

The Student Spotlight series aims to highlight the work of current MFA students, asking them to share thoughts on their practice by answering curated and peer-submitted questions.

Joseph Liatela '21 is a first-year student in Columbia’s Visual Arts program and a multi disciplinary artist based in New York City. Through a transgender lens, his work explores the institutional, cultural, and medico-legal notions of what is considered a “complete” or “correct” bodily formation. Using performance, sculpture, and photography, Liatela makes work that examines issues of gender representation, biopolitics, embodiment, and questions of authenticity. 

What themes or subjects are you currently addressing in your work?

I'm very interested in the institutional, cultural, and medico-legal ideas of what is considered to be a "complete" or "correct" body. My most recent work has been exploring the medical industrial complex and BDSM's overlap with transgender and queer identity formation and histories. There are so many material parallels with medicine and BDSM—for example, stainless steel, silicone, and latex all have queer and medical associations. The ways medicine and BDSM both intertwine with trans and queer histories are starkly contradictory, in that medicine continues to be extremely pathologizing for all marginalized bodies, and BDSM has been used in queer communities to imagine utopic spaces for sexual deviance, consensual negotiated power dynamics, and agency. As a transgender person who has roots in BDSM culture and has to navigate the medical industrial complex in order to access hormones, I'm interested in how both of these spaces have been formative to who I am, as well as the paradoxical relationship of having to rely on a medical system that is oppressive in order to access embodiment. 

Are there any themes or materials you’re interested in exploring in the future?

Yes! I am interested in doing a performance with athletes to explore gesture, intimacy, violence, and masculinity. 

What challenges do you face in your practice?

As an artist working in performance, much of my work requires collaboration, input, and cooperation to come into being. Collaborating is extremely important to me, but it has a different set of challenges with organization and planning that object making does not.

Who are artists or works of art that inspire you? Who are contemporary artists that are doing interesting work?

There are so many! Clifford Owens, Brendan Fernandes, Davina Semo, Anna Mendieta, Genesis Breyer-Porridge, Bob Flanagan, Angela Hennessy, Carlos Martiel, Nonstikelelo Mutiti, Tourmaline, Xandra Ibarra, Star Ah-Mer-As-Su, Derek Jarman, Doreen Garner, Vaginal Davis, Serena Jara, and Janine Antoni are all artists whose work has impacted me deeply. 

What has been your favorite class at Columbia so far?

I am taking a Queer Performance Studies class with Jack Halberstam which has been both challenging and incredible.