Material. V, 2025, Made in Collaboration with M. Celeste and Jess Dayan, photographed by blue.
Saturday, September 26 from 6-8 PM
A.I.R. Gallery (155 Plymouth St)
“There’s always a conductive thread through space for an untenable position.”
-Etel Adnan [1]
In conjunction with their exhibition between the skin and flesh, a thing, 2025-26 A.I.R. Fellow Mae Howard will be in conversation with collaborators M. Celeste and Jess Dayan, exploring themes of corporeality, relational trust, and perverse experimentation. The conversation will take place on September 26 from 6-8pm.
between the skin and flesh, a thing both obfuscates and unveils multiple ongoing S/M dynamics. In the dead of February winter, four feet of snow on the ground, the body of artist Mae Howard became a site of energetic conduit for a first-time improvisation between two of their long-time scene partners. Sharp and heavy, delicate and brutal, the transformed images captured of this durational collaboration evoke elemental physicality and the pressures of unyielding predicament bondage on the artist-as-material.
A.I.R. Gallery is wheelchair accessible via ramp. There are accessible toilets in the venue. There is comfortable seating with backs. Free tap water is available. The venue is nearest to the F train at York St (0.2 miles) and the A, C trains at High St (0.5 miles). The nearest wheelchair accessible trains are the 2, 3 at Borough Hall (0.8 miles) and the B, Q, R at Dekalb Av (1.1 miles). The roads immediately surrounding the gallery are cobblestone. The nearest accessible parking garage (for an hourly fee) is two blocks away at 100 Jay St. No fee or ID necessary for entry. Please contact info@airgallery.org for more information or to request additional accommodations.
1. Etel Adanan, Premonition (Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 2014), 20.
Known for their steel and string fetishism, M. Celeste is a methodical sharps Top and bloody predicament deviser. Experiments in surface tension, both physical and psychological, have come to define their scene practice. Their creative work is the confluence of over a decade spent writing about art, and fifteen years as a BDSM lifestylist. They are based in Lenapehoking.
Jess Dayan is a leatherqueer dominant and visual artist practicing in performance, photography and ceramics. Their work explores intimacy and violence through public confrontations that expose an energetic dance of unyielding brutality and attuned presence. Their inventive steel chain bondage, suspension predicaments, sharps, and leather rituals investigate relational extremity and body limitation. Dayan’s work is informed by a lifelong artistic study of anatomy, material methodology, and a decade of public practice in lifestyle BDSM.
Mae Howard is an artist, facilitator, and organizer whose work calls upon lineages of disabled labor economies. Their practice emphasizes endurance as a transmutation and manifestation of long-form debilitation. Howard's work is research-based, participatory, and collaborative, rooted in a shared form of witnessing through collective exchange and relational dependency. Their practice probes the aesthetic, material, and felt conditions of BDSM practices and leather histories as a foil to the medical-carceral industrial complex. They have been a BDSM lifestylist for the last decade.
Howard has received residencies and fellowships from Bemis Center, Pioneer Works, Queer Art, A.I.R. Gallery, ACRE, BricLab, Pocoapoco, and Picture Berlin. Their work has been screened and exhibited at School of Visual Arts, GHOSTMACHINE, Westbeth Gallery, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS, Dia Chelsea, Vox Populi, Atelier Gallery, Automat Gallery, gr__und, and tête among others. Howard has given lectures and participated on panels at Dia Art Foundation, the Migros Museum, Max Planck Institute, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Pratt University, Smith College, and Brown University. They have taught multiple years of coursework at the University of Pennsylvania, The School of Making Thinking and co-facilitated a workshop for Toolbox Collective.