LOIS BIELEFELD
Ben. 2014, color photograph, 40”x55”
This photograph is from the series Androgyny (2014-2015), which explores the power and complexity of gender identity. As part of this series, Ben. 2014 challenges social constructions of gender while celebrating gender expression and fluidity. The complete Androgyny (2014-2015) series comprises 57 portraits, 3 short films, and an installation with audio.
kQween, 2014, color photograph, 40”x55”
This photograph is from the series Androgyny (2014-2015), which explores the power and complexity of gender identity. As part of this series, kQween, 2014 challenges social constructions of gender while celebrating gender expression and fluidity. The complete Androgyny (2014-2015) series comprises 57 portraits, 3 short films, and an installation with audio.
Ra, Seynabou, and Jared. 2022, color photograph, 25”x35”
This photograph is from the New Domesticity (2018-2022) series. This series comprises 101 staged and collaborative photographs that look at how people think about the concept of home and their roles within it. Each portrait starts with an in-depth audio interview and results in an elaborately staged scene of the participants performing their domesticity for the camera. Additionally, participants add objects of meaning to the scene.
Chloe, Harper, and Stan, 2019, color photograph, 25”x35”
This photograph is from the New Domesticity (2018-2022) series. This series comprises 101 staged and collaborative photographs that look at how people think about the concept of home and their roles within it. Each portrait starts with an in-depth audio interview and results in an elaborately staged scene of the participants performing their domesticity for the camera. Additionally, participants add objects of meaning to the scene.
Corral Family Dinner and Announcement, 2022, color photograph, 37”x50”
This photograph is from the Celebration (2018-current) series. This series delves into the complex and charged space of celebrations through re-enacted staged tableaux of actual celebrations. Corral Family Dinner and Announcement, 2022 is one photograph from a sequence of five reenacting the Corral family dinner that resulted in the exciting announcement by Margarita (right) and her husband that they were expecting. Before the big announcement, Margarita and her mother Maribel (left) prepare a favorite Guadalajara-inspired meal together.
Why Water Street?
Growing up in an evangelical conservative household meant I didn’t have a framework for exploring my sexual identity/self since I didn’t have parents I could turn to for support and advice. But I was able to turn to Planned Parenthood for resources, consultation, and information when I was a teen, and it made a difference. Ensuring others have access to this resource and feel supported in their time of need is immensely important to me. Thus, having my work in the collection at Water Street Health Center is quite meaningful to me. I strive to make work everyone can connect with and see themselves in. Additionally, I try to insert lesser-represent communities into the photographic canon, including my own queer community.
More about the artist:
I am a queer series-based artist working in photography, performance, audio, video, and installation. My work continually asks the question of what links routine and ritual to the formation of identity, personhood, and the development of meaning-making. Via large serial works, I collect samples around a central idea. These central ideas have included home, family, identity, gender, queerness, domesticity, and labor. Humanness is messy and as humans, we have a need to understand and ascribe meaning to the havoc. This endless complexity is what I explore in my work: the why, who, what, when, where, and how of it all. In a way, I’m trying to create order while asserting a claim for difference.
