Mark Aguhar |
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| Born | Mark Cagaanan Aguhar
(1987-05-16)May 16, 1987
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| Died | March 12, 2012(2012-03-12) (aged 24)
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| Education | University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA), University of Texas at Austin (BA) |
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Mark Cagaanan Aguhar (May 16, 1987 – March 12, 2012)[1] was an American activist, writer[2][3] and multimedia fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and transgender femme-identified. Aguhar was made famous by her Tumblr blog that questioned the mainstream representation of the "glossy glorification of the gay white male body".[4][5][6]
Life
Aguhar was born May 16, 1987, in Houston, Texas, in a Filipino American family.[7][8] She attended the University of Texas at Austin.[7][9] Aguhar's works include performance-based pieces, watercolors, collages, and photography. Often the work was of self-portraits with hair extensions, make-up, gender-specific clothing and a beautiful, unashamed portrait of herself, curves and all and reminds the viewer that Aguhar's life and mere existence was an act of confronting white hegemony.[7]
Aguhar maintained an online presence on Tumblr, which hosted both her professional and personal websites. As Tumblr user "calloutqueen," she titled her blog "BLOGGING FOR BROWN GURLS," posting her thoughts about sexuality, sex, dating, gender, and her work.[1][10]
"My work is about visibility. My work is about the fact that I'm a genderqueer person of color fat femme fag feminist and I don't really know what to do with that identity in this world. It's that thing where you grew up learning to hate every aspect of yourself and unlearning all that misery is really hard to do. It's that thing where you kind of regret everything you've ever done because it's so complicit with white hegemony. It's that thing where you realize that your own attempts at passive aggressive manipulation and power don't stand a chance against the structural forms of domination against your body. It's that thing where the only way to cope with the reality of your situation is to pretend it doesn't exist; because flippancy is a privilege you don't own but you're going to pretend you do anyway."
— Mark Aguhar
Aguhar was only a few months away from earning her MFA degree from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) when she died by suicide in Chicago, Illinois, on March 12, 2012.[11][12]
Legacy
Since 2012, there is a "Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant" available through Chances Dances for queer artists of color.[13]
In 2013, artist Edie Fake had the exhibition titled, "Memory Palaces" in Chicago and paid tribute to five artists and friends that had died, one of which was Mark Aguhar.[14]
The 2015–2016 exhibition, Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics, started the tour at Cooper Union and was created in order to explore the meaning of trans and what defines transgender aesthetic in many different forms of artwork.[15][16] Other transgender artists and archivists participating in this exhibition included: Niv Acosta, Math Bass, Effy Beth [es], Justin Vivian Bond, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Vaginal Davis, Zackary Drucker, Chloe Dzubilo, Tourmaline with Sasha Wortzel, Juliana Huxtable, Greer Lankton, Pierre Molinier, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Flawless Sabrina, Buzz Slutzky, and Chris Vargas with the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art.[15]
Her poem "Litanies to My Heavenly Brown Body" was widely circulated after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.[2][17][18]
In the publication "Proximity: On the Work of Mark Aguhar," (2015), writer Roy Pérez examines Aguhar's drawings, videos, live acts, and writings as performances of closeness, and as critiques of racism, transphobia, and fat phobia. Pérez highlights the complexity of Aguhar's queerness and "not wanting to form attachments within the dominant normative society".[19]
