For the second and final event to accompany Rowan Renee’s exhibition Airport Beach, the artist will host a conversation with Gabriel Arkles, who is currently Senior Counsel at the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. During this event, which will be in person and streaming via Zoom, will focus on building relationships between artists and the courts. Renee and Arkles will reflect on current legal events, particularly around transgender rights for minors. They will discuss the evolution of language and rhetoric in arguments presented in courts in response to conservative attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, how artists and litigators can learn from one another, and how the courtroom serves as a site that can both limit and articulate possibilities for queer people as citizens.
Gabriel Arkles (he / him / his) is Senior Counsel at the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. He is one of the leading transgender litigators in the country. Most recently as Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project, Gabriel was part of the legal team that represented Aimee Stephens before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County that established anti-transgender discrimination is prohibited under federal law.
Previously, Gabriel was Staff Attorney and Director of Prisoner Justice Initiatives at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. He also spent seven years teaching legal skills, first at New York University School of Law and later at Northeastern School of Law.
Gabriel’s work has appeared in publications such as the NYU Law Review, Northeastern Law Journal, Southwestern Law Review, and Scholar and Feminist Online. Past commentary has been found in a range of outlets, such as The Advocate, TruthOut, CBS, NBC News, and WNYC. Additionally, Gabriel has received the Dukeminier Award for best sexual orientation law review article in 2009. When he’s not working, Gabriel serves on the steering committee for Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD), reads speculative fiction, plays role-playing games, studies Islamic feminist theology, eats cupcakes, and cuddles cats.
Rowan Renee (b. 1985, West Palm Beach, Florida) explores how queer identity is mediated by the law. In their research-led practice, they collect imagery, text and documents from State records and family archives to understand the intergenerational impact of gender-based violence, incarceration and family secrets. Through craft techniques – including kiln-formed glass, printmaking and loom-weaving – they bring personal themes of memory, grief and shame to bear on larger issues of harm and accountability in order to dismantle carceral logics of punishment and create a more nuanced framework for understanding what transformative justice asks of us.
Their work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Anchorage Museum of Art (2021), Five Myles (2021), Aperture Foundation (2017), and Pioneer Works (2015), with reviews in publications including VICE, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times. Currently, their project Between the Lines, in collaboration with We, Women Photo, runs art workshops by correspondence with LGBTQ+ people currently incarcerated in Florida. Their installation, No Spirit For Me (2019), was included in the critically acclaimed exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, curated by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood at MoMA PS1.
Image Credit: Rowan Renee, process view of stained glass from Airport Beach, site-specific installation, 2021.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
Airport Beach is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council. The artist would also like to thank the Textile Arts Center and the Center for Book Arts for their support in the production of this project.