Caleb Cole: Collective Feelings

Caleb Cole’s Collective Feelings is a multidisciplinary exhibition that examines questions of queer identity, intimacy, community, and history. With collaged photographs, installations, sculptures, video, and anthotype portraits, Cole challenges the need to create community based on sameness, and instead insists on the power of collectives that are messy and malleable, uniting because of their shared feelings of difference.  Collective Feelings encourages the viewer to resist stagnation by drawing on the past to imagine new and better possible futures.

In Lieu of Flowers, a series of over 80 anthotype portraits, lines three walls of the gallery. Anthotypes are created using photosensitive material from plants.  First, an emulsion
is made from crushed flower petals and applied to paper. The coated sheet of paper
is then dried, and a photographic negative is placed on top. Finally, it is exposed
in the sun until only the shadowed parts remain.

Working on this series of ongoing portraits, Cole relied on the availability of roses
in their garden and days of sunshine.  Each portrait is an individual from the trans community who was murdered in the United States or Puerto Rico in 2020-2021.  

‘In Lieu of Flowers' is an ongoing series of memorial portraits of the trans people murdered in the United States and Puerto Rico due to transphobia, state violence, and neglect. 
Part mourning ritual and part photograph, I use the roses from my garden and portraits primarily made by the subjects themselves to create a series of anthotypes, images created using photosensitive material from plants and the sun that cannot be fixed, therefore, will eventually fade. The process is an act of devotion and extended witnessing over the course of days – to weeks-long exposures. The resulting work is an examination of community, loss, time, and impossible effort to extend both the life of their roses and the memory of these stolen lives. 
Caleb Cole 2021

Caleb Cole was just named one of the Top 50 finalists for Critical Mass 2021 and selected amongst ten finalists (out of 535 submissions) for The Print Center 96th Annual International Competition Winners. Cole’s portraits series In Lieu of Flowers was their submission.

Cole is also 2015 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, 2013 Hearst 8x10 Biennial Winner, 3-time Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Winner, 2011 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award winner, 2011 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Finalist, 2009 Artadia Award winner, and a 2009 Photolucida Critical Mass finalist. 

Cole exhibits regularly at a variety of national venues and has held solo shows in Boston, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, among others. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Newport Art Museum, Davis Art Museum, Brown University Art Museum and Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

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