Andrew Suggs is a curator, writer, and artist from Appalachian Tennessee who lives in New York. Andrew’s work and research focuses on art and AIDS, queer art and artists, and performance.
Full CV
Andrew Suggs is a curator, writer, and artist from Appalachian Tennessee who lives in New York. Andrew’s work and research focuses on art and AIDS, queer art and artists, and performance.
Full CV
Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves
Curator
April 5 – May 25, 2025
Hessel Museum, Bard College
Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves makes use of the archive to center process and performance, engaging questions around how traces of both performance practices and HIV/AIDS are inherited. John Lovett and Alessandro Codagnone made genre-spanning work as Lovett/Codagnone starting in 1995 and until Codagnone’s death in 2019. Their collaborative practice calls forth histories of subversive sexuality, ranging from the aesthetics of gay leather and S&M culture to important queer cultural works. Lovett/Codagnone’s highly citational practice investigates power structures—intimate and interpersonal struggles as well as issues of citizenship and state control—as a way to chronicle subcultures and work against their erasure and commodification.
Two studio walls from Lovett/Codagnone’s residence in New York City—one maintained by each of the duo—are meticulously re-created. The walls display hundreds of pieces of ephemera that speak to key themes in their practice. They also chronicle a key period in HIV/AIDS history that writers Theodore (ted) Kerr and Alexandra Juhasz call the “Second Silence”—a period of cultural avoidance of HIV/AIDS from around 1996, when life-saving antiretroviral treatment was first prescribed in the United States, until around 2012, when culture began to revisit the early years of the pandemic.
During the three-hour opening, Closer (1998), a key performance work by artist team Lovett/Codagnone will be archived and given new form by longtime collaborator Julie Tolentino.
In the original performance, Alessandro Codagnone (wearing a plastic mask, leather shorts, and black high heels) blindfolds and ties Lovett’s hands behind his back, then seductively dances circles around him, against the sonic backdrop of “Moments in Love” by Art of Noise (1984). Tolentino’s durational and solo performance archive of Closer alternates between the two roles, as she swaps costumes and mimics the action of one partner, then the other. This work centers the beauty and problems of archival performance presentation, engaging questions of how gender is translated through different bodies over time and how traces of performance practices are inherited.
Julie Tolentino’s innovative performance-based work includes The Sky Remains the Same, a series in which Tolentino invites collaborators to select work from their own performance history to archive onto or through her body.
Generous support for the exhibition was provided by the Second Ward Foundation.
>> There Is No Revolution Without Libidinal Investment: Emi Fontana, Andrew Suggs, and Julie Tolentino in conversation, Mousse
>> Fifteen Shows in One at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, Taliesin Thomas for Hyperallergic
Lovett/Codagnone (header image): The Walk, 1996. C-print, 30 x 30 inches. Installation views from Lovett/Codagnone: Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, April 5 – May 25, 2025. Photos: Olympia Shannon. Performance documentation of Julie Tolentino, The Sky Remains the Same: Lovett/Codagnone’s Closer (1998/2005), 2025. Photos: Ohan Breiding.
Lovett/Codagnone: Closer
Editor, Designer
2025
Closer, a catalog published on the occassion of Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, April 5 - May 25, 2025. The catalog focuses on a single Lovett/Codagnone performance, Closer (1998/2005), which is archived and given new form in the exhibition by Julie Tolentino. It features an interview with Lovett/Codagnone and Lia Gangitano from 2006, never before published, and an essay by curator Andrew Suggs on “Sonic Traces of Subcultures” in the performance.
The design of the booklet nods to the studio walls of ephemera in the exhibition [see above]. A few objects from the studio walls have been reproduced in facsimile form and tipped into the booklet, along with six stills from the 1998 version of Closer, printed on vellum squares.
Second Annual Conference on Artist Curated Exhibitions
Co-Curator
Giorno Poetry Systems, New York
May 3 – 4, 2025
A conference centering scholarhship around artist-curated exhibitions created in collaboration with Anthony Huberman, Eli Copeland, Hayoung Chung, Javier Villanueva, Audrey Min, and Đỗ Tường Linh.
Organized and moderated an intergenerational panel to discuss Against Nature (1989, LACE, Los Angeles; curated by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins), an exhibition that focused on AIDS largely through affective rather than political responses. Panel included Nayland Blake, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Jo-ey Tang, Emily Colucci, Sur Rodney Sur, and Ryan Mangione. Worked with artists and distributors to recreate and screen original video program at GPS.
Organized a performative response to TransEuphoria (2011, Umbrella Arts; curated by Chloe Dzubilo and Jeffrey Greene). Gavilán Rayna Russom performed a live electronic sound work, Oh Remain, incorporating samples of Chloe Dzubilo’s voice from the archive of T De Long. The work was reprised on the occassion of the exhibition Chloe Dzubilo: The Prince George Drawings (curated by Alex Fleming and Nia Nottage) at Participant Inc, New York, on July 16, 2025.
>> Giorno Poetry Systems: Full Conference Information
>> Against Nature (1989): LACE Website
>> Jeffrey Greene interviewed in POZ Magazine about Transeuphoria and Chloe Dzubilo
Conference views, May 4, 2025, Giorno Poetry Systems, New York.
Everything I Know About AIDS I Learned from the Movies
Essay
2024
A version of this essay was published in the inaugural issue of Gleaning, a Toronto-based film zine edited by Jacob Creapult.
“Vada and Thomas J. shared their first kiss under a willow tree, and when Thomas J. returned later, alone, to search for Vada’s lost mood ring, a swarm of bees stung him to death. He was allergic.
In my young mind, this was the perfect metaphor for my eventual death or the loss of my boyfriend, and I now realize that putting this story on a loop was a rehearsal for the certain tragedy I had begun to see as inevitable as my sexuality budded and I watched gay men die on television from AIDS. I had already mixed up sex and death at age 9. The two were forever fused for me. A first kiss meant death by a thousand stings.”
The Catastrophe That Has Already Happened: Jimmy DeSana, Mail Art Networks & Queer Zines
Lecture & Conversation
July 14, 2024
KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin
Andrew Suggs gives a talk on Jimmy DeSana’s early engagement with mail art and queer zine culture anchored in the discussion of a particular image that DeSana distributed through both these channels, the c. 1973 self-portrait in which he appears to have hanged himself. Looking at other of DeSana’s photographs as rehearsals for death open up questions around the relationships among death, AIDS, and photography. Gregory Battcock’s briefly lived periodical Trylon & Perisphere, for which DeSana served as staff photographer, serves as a key point of reference.
Following this talk, Andrew was joined by Andrew Pasquier, an editor of BUTT Magazine, and other guests who discussed the contemporary state of queer zines addressing issues of audience, network building, sex and self-publishing and the impact of the internet.
The talk was one of two public programs Suggs designed and implemented in conjunction with Jimmy DeSana and Paul P.: Ruins of Rooms, curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen with Linda Franken.
Jimmy DeSana, Untitled (self-portrait), 1975. Vintage silver gelatin print, 12 × 10.5 × 1 inches. Andrew and Andrew discuss queer networking.
Darkrooms: a photography workshop
Focus Tour
August 9, 2024
KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin
Andrew Suggs and artist/arts educator Thesea Rigou designed and hosted a hands-on photography workshop that explored in depth the themes of the exhibition Jimmy DeSana and Paul P.: Ruins of Rooms, including queer temporalities and sexuality, body-as-object, performance and theatricality. Participants collectively staged and shot their own photographs inspired by the works of Jimmy DeSana and Paul P. and through their own creative process engaged in a group discussion about their relationship to the works on view.
Dueñas de la Noche
Co-curator
Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College
December 7 – 17, 2023
ISLAA, New York
Sep 7, 2024 – Apr 5, 2025
Dueñas de la Noche: Trans Lives and Dreams in 1980s Caracas features Trans, a 1982 documentary by filmmakers Manuel Herreros de Lemos and Mateo Manaure Arilla that follows a group of Venezuelan trans women in early 1980s Caracas as they share their dreams and demonstrate their resilience against the backdrop of the city. Dueñas de la Noche marks the first time Trans is shown in New York, providing an intimate look at these women’s experiences as sex workers, their aspirations, and their community.
When the film first premiered in 1982 at the Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela, police attempted to arrest Herreros de Lemos, Manaure Arilla, and the twenty-five trans women film collaborators and subjects in attendance. After its premiere, the filmmakers encountered challenges in screening the film for decades, which made preserving and sharing the documentary precarious and dangerous. In 2022, ISLAA acquired four digital copies of the film to facilitate the study of this striking work and its complex historical context and to preserve the memory of these women.
The show includes ephemera and photographs from ISLAA’s collection, including portraits of the film’s subjects taken in exchange for the women’s participation in the film.
Dueñas de la Noche is co-curated by Omar Farah, Lucas Ondak, Clara Prat-Gay, Andrew Suggs, Micaela Vindman, and Clara von Turkovich, with guidance from ISLAA Artist Seminar Initiative professor and curator Mariano López Seoane.
>> Screen Slate review by Elizabeth Purchell
>> New Yorker review by Hilton Als
>> El País review by Ana Vidal Egea
>> Institute for Studies on Latin American Art
Installation views, Dueñas de la Noche: Trans Lives and Dreams in 1980s Caracas, 2023. Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Photos: Olympia Shannon. Installation views: Dueñas de la Noche: Trans Lives and Dreams in 1980s Caracas, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2024. Photos: Sebastian Bach.
Kin to these tremors
Co-curator
Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College
December 7 – 17, 2023
Kin to these tremors centers the precariousness of human life. Facing imminent sickness, decay, or death, the figures depicted in this exhibition exude a subtle agency, whether in Maria Lassnig’s self-portraits created near the end of her life or in Lucky DeBellevue’s chenille sculpture evoking the soft architecture of the human form. In other artworks, the body is pried at, shown ill, and found under strain. Together, the works on view maintain a sense of persistence, even as their subjects variously encounter senescence, disease, environmental hazards, or sociopolitical violence. The exhibition asks: Under these conditions, what forms might agency, resistance, and dignity take?
The exhibition’s title originates from “Patient History,” a poem by Travis Chi Wing Lau that describes his experiences of pain as a marker of time. Punctuating the exhibition, a cacophony of metronomes—an artwork by Martin Creed—stands as a persistent reminder of time’s creep.
Featured artists include Vito Acconci, Lucky DeBellevue, Martin Creed, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maria Lassnig, Adam Putnam, Jo Spence, and Rosemarie Trockel.
Kin to these tremors is curated by Đỗ Tường Linh, Cicely Haggerty, Lekha Jandhyala, Audrey Min, and Andrew Suggs.
Header image: Rosemarie Trockel, Paranoia, 2013, acrystal, perspex, digital print, and acrylic paint, 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 x 3 1/2 inches. Maria Lassnig, Der ewige Weihnachtsmann bringt auch was im Juli, 2002. pencil and acrylic on paper, 17 5/16 x 23 9/16 in. Vito Acconci, Pryings, 1971, video, black & white, sound, 17 minutes. Lucky de Bellevue, Untitled, 2002, chenille stems and tassel, 92 x 29 x 17 in. Adam Putnam, Untitled (Wisp), 2007, silver gelatin print, 20 x 16 in. Jo Spence, Remodeling Photo History: Colonization (from Remodeling Photo History series), 1981-1982, silver gelatin print, 9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in. Martin Creed, Work No. 223, 1999, 3 metronomes beating time, one quickly, one slowly and one neither quickly nor slowly. Felix Gonzalez Torres, “Untitled” (A Walk In the Snow), 1993, c-print, 24 7/8 x 32 in. Rosemarie Trockel, Menopause, 2005, wool, 16 1/2 in. x 116 1/2 in.
Installation views from From the Collection: First Year Curatorial Practice 2023, CCS Bard Galleries, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, December 7 – December 17, 2023. All works from the Marieluise Hessel Collection, curated by the M.A. candidates of the Class of 2025. Photo: Olympia Shannon 2023.
Sound & Vision
Curator
Ongoing
Sound & Vision began as a weekly program for WXBC, the radio station of Bard College. In these recordings, I ask an artist, curator, or writer to choose an album recording that is meaningful to them, their practice, their thought processes. After listening to the album in its entirety, we chat.
Episode 1: Leah Bailis
The Best of Nina Simone, RCA Records (1969)
Episode 2: Michael Wang
Carmina Burana: Songs from the Original Manuscript, Studio Der Frühen Musik, Thomas Binkley (1964)
Episdoe 3: Kenton DeAngeli
Only No One, Nature Boy (2016)
Episdoe 4: Matt Savitsky
Horse Rotorvator, Coil (1986)
Episode 5: Luis Enrique Zela-Koort
Biophillia, Björk (2011)
Episode 6: Javier Villanueva
Goldberg Variations Variations, John Menick (2009)
Images: (header) Leah Bailis, Failure, 2015, t-shirt, gold beads, hanger. Michael Wang, Contagion Garden, 2002, intermingled historic varieties of virus-infected tulips with uninfected plants. Matt Savitsky, Angels, 2018, improved durational performance at ICA Philadelphia, two hours. Javier Villanueva. Kenton DeAngeli performing. Luis Enrique Zela-Koort, Prime Organ, 2022, mixed media, 8 x 8 x 3.5 meters.
Louise Fishman: My City
Assistant curator, catalog essayist
Locks Gallery, Philadelphia
September 6 – October 19, 2019
My City features recent paintings and marks a return home for Fishman, who was born in Philadelphia, where she spent her early life and attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University, before settling in New York.
Louise Fishman’s career spanned over five decades, throughout which she produced tough and uncompromising work that is at once architectonic and poetic. Her paintings are layered upon an improvised structural grid assembled out of strokes, skeins, and slashes of oil paint, applied with large, serrated trowels and scrapers, along with more traditional paint brushes—and sometimes, her hands. Fishman’s work celebrates the process of painting and its materiality in works where containment and release are palpably visible. She adds, scrapes away, and re-applies paint, working and reworking canvases over a long period of time.
>>Essay in Louise Fishman Monograph by KARMA
>>Fran Bigman: Bookforum’s Outsanding Art Books
>> The Estate of Louise Fishman
Louise Fishman (header image): Arcanum, 2015, oil on linen, 74 x 88 inches. Installation views, Louise Fishman: My City, September 6 - October 29, 2019, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia. Louise Fishman (left to right): Antica Locanda Montin, 2016, oil on linen, 60 x 50 inches; Zero, 2016, oil on linen, 74 x 88 inches; As Is, 2017, oil on linen, 96 x 72 inches.