Joe Mama-Nitzberg

In my work, I am interested in challenging expectations of how certain languages, peoples, histories, media and mediums are asked to perform culturally. My work uses video, photography, collage, painting and sculpture. The work speaks to the histories of Conceptual, Modern and Postmodern sensibilities. It addresses, design, humor, the digital “hand”, the conceptual “hand”, Fashion, the fashionability of medium, the fashionability of theoretical and political positions, “queerness”, a “gay” sensibility, Punk, AIDS, Class, Classic Hollywood, and mortality…among others things. I “identify” as a 50-year-old white gay male artist from the United States. I was raised in an agnostic, culturally Jewish, politically progressive working class family. My work explores the implications, assumptions and ramifications associated with this statement in 2015. I am interested in questioning ideas of what makes my position and identity as an artist relevant…or privileged…or marginalized.