Catherine Opie’s 1993 photograph Self-Portrait/Cutting serves as the starting point to the Dreaming of Home exhibition. From this seminal work, the show highlights the dissonances experienced by queer people in their desires to live and thrive, alongside the routine restrictions imposed by wider society.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Opie’s seminal work. Gemma Rolls-Bentley joins Opie in discussing the queer body in history, the importance of poking at the "why?", what she loves about being an artist, and how home has evolved for her from the little house she carved three decades ago.

Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Sandusky, OH), is an artist working with photography, film, collage, and ceramics. She was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow recipient and the Robert Mapplethorpe Resident in Photography at the American Academy in Rome for 2021. Opie’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad and is held in over 50 major collections throughout the world. Her first monograph, “Catherine Opie,” was published by Phaidon in 2021. Opie received a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1988, and lives and works in Los Angeles.

A full transcript of the episode is available here.

Christina Quarles' Tilt shift, referenced at 14:37: https://www.pilarcorrias.com/artists/26-christina-quarles/works/8918/

Catherine Opie's Walls, windows, blood, referenced at 18:35: https://www.thomasdanegallery.com/news/626

This podcast series is produced by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Dreaming of Home is on view September 7–January 7, 2024. Learn more about the show at leslielohman.org/exhibitions/dreaming-of-home

Show music: Fantasy Island Obsession by Tom Rasmussen ft. Kai-Isaiah Jamal, with thanks to Globe Town Records.

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