LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is hosting Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., organized by ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. The exhibition is being shown in two West Hollywood spaces, MOCA Pacific Design Center and the ONE Gallery. It features more than 50 LGBTQ and Chicano artists who created experimental artworks in a variety of media between the 1960s and early 1990s—a period bookended by the Chicano Moratorium, gay liberation, and feminist movements on one end, and the ravages of the AIDS crisis on the other. Axis Mundo is the result of extensive research by co-curators David Evans Frantz, Curator at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, and C. Ondine Chavoya, Professor of Art and Latina/o Studies at Williams College. While developing the exhibition, the curators visited archives at institutions throughout North America and the United Kingdom and met with artists—as well as family members, friends, and collaborators of those artists—whose work has not been exhibited publicly since the 1970s or 1980s.

The curators’ research has helped to uncover the work of several less-visible and forgotten LGBTQ and Chicano artists from the period, including many artists who passed away due to the AIDS crisis. A focal point for the exhibition is artist Edmundo “Mundo” Meza (1955–85), who collaborated with many of the artists featured in the exhibition and worked in media ranging from abstract paintings and sketches to performance and avant-garde window displays created with window dresser Simon Doonan for stores in West Hollywood. Additonal artists include Laura Aguilar, Jerri Allyn, Roberto Gil de Montes, Gronk, Pauline Oliveros, Teddy Sandoval, Joey Terrill, Patssi Valdez, and Johanna Went, among others. The exhibition also spotlights many recently uncovered works, including minimalist collages by Carlos Almaraz produced during the early 1970s while living in New York; photographs by Warhol Factory participant Tosh Carrillo exhibited for the first time in Axis Mundo; documenation of a performance by Judith F. Baca at the Woman’s Building; and videos, sound records, and flyer designs by the queer punk band Nervous Gender. This presentation offers a new lens on art and culture, by looking at artistic interventions in both the LGBTQ and Chicana/o activist movements, experimental performances from the Los Angeles punk scene, and mail art and zines that enabled new modes of community and collaboration through DIY distribution.

In conjunction with the Axis Mundo exhibition and MOCA’s public programs, ONE Archives is presenting additional public programs at venues throughout Los Angeles. ONE Archives also published a fully illustrated, 414-page exhibition catalogue featuring an introductory essay by co-curators Chavoya and Frantz as well as nine additional thematic essays, reprints of historical texts and archival documents, and individual biographical entries for all the included artists. Catalogue contributors include Leticia Alvarado, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Colin Gunckel, Joshua Javier Guzmán, Richard T. Rodríguez, and Iván A. Ramos. Designed by Kimberly Varella of Content Object, the catalogue will be available in October 2017.

The exhibition is being presented at both the ONE Archives’ gallery in West Hollywood, temporarily located at 9007 Melrose Avenue, and MOCA Pacific Design Center.
Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. is organized by David Evans Frantz, Curator at ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, and C. Ondine Chavoya, Professor of Art and Latina/o Studies at Williams College, in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.