Capitol Reef: Beaux Mendes

Born in 1987 in New York City, Beaux Mendes lives and works in Los Angeles. They received an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles as well as from Bard Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts. In 2021, their first one-person exhibition, Willow Staging Area, was held at STARS, Los Angeles. En Plein Error, an eponymous exhibition of a collaborative drawing group’s work, was staged at ltd los angeles in 2019. Mendes’ work has been included in group shows at STARS, Real Pain Fine Arts, The Gallery at Michael’s, all in Los Angeles, at Palazzo Tamborino Cezzi, Lecce, Italy, and at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, among others.

Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York based art historian specializing in queer art and culture. She holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with a dissertation on art, AIDS, and lesbian identity in the United States. Soboleva is currently working on a book project titled Friendship as a Way of Art: Queer Identity and Visual Citation, and co-editing (with Svetlana Kitto) the first major publication on the lesbian gallery Trial Balloon. Her writings have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Ursula Magazine, as well as various exhibition catalogues and artist monographs. She teaches at the New School and NYU.