If you have any interest in poetry, you probably know Pamela Sneed—Black, lesbian, radical poet, and one of the infamous Grand Dames of the downtown scene. Her stage presence is formidable and her voice, revolutionary. Her 2020 book Funeral Diva published by City Lights Books looks back on her experiences during the AIDS Crisis while making correlations to COVID-19, and the ongoing layered impacts of racism, homophobia, and political brutality. In ABOUT time at Laurel Gitlen, Sneed’s visual practice merges with her poetic one, creating an exhibition that is fiercely outspoken, experimental, and personal.

Itziar Barrio’s genre-fucking is generative and liberating. Narrative, reenactment, fracturing, remix, and improvisation are approached sans a tyrannical hierarchy of form.

When I first encountered Judith’s work, I felt aligned with her crude sense of humor, her larger-than-life rage against oppressive politics, and her evident rebelliousness, not only as a feminist but as a Jersey girl—as someone who says “fuck” a lot.