Alyssa Taylor Wendt is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and curator working in Austin and Detroit. Her recent projects reference ritual, animism, mysticism, architecture, and history using video, sculpture, staged photographs, and performance. Earning her MFA from Bard College, she has shown and performed internationally since 2004. Her three-channel video H A I N T premiered at the Visual Arts Center at UT Austin, and she recently curated a 63-artist show about death and transformation called Good Mourning Tis of Thee. In addition to her four two-woman shows at ICOSA Collective in Austin, she has exhibited and performed extensively including Women and Their Work, Austin (2015); Co-Lab Projects, Austin (2012, 2010); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2011); and Babel, Norway (2009); TSA, Los Angeles (2018); Wassaic Project, New York (2018); DEMO Gallery, Austin (2017); Third Man Records, Detroit (2016); New Museum for Contemporary Art, NY (2011); and Miami Art Basel (2008); Museum of Art and Design, NY (2013), Deitch Projects, NY (2005) and Fusebox Festival, Austin (2012).
She is a recipient of several awards, including Official Winner of the International Istanbul Film Festival Award for H A I N T (2018), TMI at the Sigues du Nuit festival in Paris (2021) and the City of Austin Cultural Council Grant (2015-2021). She is currently a candidate for a second master’s degree in Museum Studies from Harvard and plans to open a small non-profit museum of cultural artifacts in Detroit in 2023.
Image courtesy of the artist, by Timothy Cummings
Heyd Fontenot was born in 1964 into a pragmatic family in rural Louisiana whose interests ran a narrow gamut from rice farming to rodeo. He has spent the majority of his adult life in Texas working in film and television while building an extensive multi-disciplinary studio practice which includes drawing, painting, experimental video, and installations.
Fontenot’s work deftly mines the trauma of a Catholic upbringing in conflict with his queer identity, balancing great moral courage and vulnerability with a boisterous aesthetic and a sly sense of humor. His diverse bodies of work all contain an unapologetic sexual delight and a heightened and sincere humanity. Regardless of the medium, there is an unswerving focus on emotional connection.
From 2011-2016, Fontenot was the director of CentralTrak, a highly respected artists’ residency and exhibition space in Dallas, Texas, where his curation blurred lines between political activism, object making, performance, and inclusive community organizing. He is currently the consulting director of Sala Diaz in San Antonio, Texas.
Fontenot’s mid-career survey exhibition “The Very Queer Portraits of Heyd Fontenot,” which included painting, drawing, and video, traveled to the University of Maryland, Rollins College, and Allegheny College. He is represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas where his upcoming exhibition “Color! Pattern! Propaganda!" opens November 20th, 2021.
Image courtesy of the artist, by Max Helfman
City of Austin Cultural Arts Division grants