Symptom II, 2025, Made in Collaboration with Fluent, Photographed by Gabriella N. Báez.
Saturday, October 3 at 5 PM
A.I.R. Gallery (155 Plymouth St)
In tandem with 2025-26 A.I.R. Fellow Mae Howard’s solo show, between the skin and flesh, a thing Mae Howard and Johanna Hedva will converge in conversation about dependency, second skins, and the role of BDSM within frameworks of disabled labor and debilitation. between the skin and flesh, a thing reconstructs images of scenes with long term collaborators printing them on transparent horse hide, to explore themes of endurance-based debilitation and body as palimpsest. The conversation will draw on Hedva’s devotion to the “cosmologies of endurance” and “erotics of gravity,” currently explored in their solo exhibition Gravity: My / Favorite Enemy, on view at CARA from September 19 through December 13, 2026. The conversation will take place on October 3rd at 5pm.
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. This event will be masks required, with free masks and Covid tests available on site. ASL Interpretation is available upon request, with a 2-3 week notice required.
Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician who lives between Los Angeles and New York, and was raised in LA by a family of witches. Hedva is the author of the 2024 essay collection How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, which won the Amber Hollibaugh Award for LGBTQ Social Justice Writing. They are also the author of the novel Your Love Is Not Good, which was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the novel On Hell, which was named one of Dennis Cooper’s favorites of 2018. Their latest book, My Knife Collection and Other Subjects of Desire, will be published in November 2026 by Sming Sming Books. Their artwork has been shown internationally, most recently in the Seoul Mediacity Biennial, at the HAU Berlin, and in solo exhibitions in New York City at CARA (opening in September 2026), in Los Angeles at JOAN and London at TINA; and in group exhibitions at Gropius Bau, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Amant Foundation, Performance Space New York, Seoul Museum of Art, the 14th Shanghai Biennial, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Modern Art Oxford, and MASS MoCA. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House (2021) and The Sun and the Moon (2019). Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages. In 2024, they were a Disability Futures Fellow, and they are currently a 2026 USA Fellow.
Image designed and directed by Sadia Quddus, Photographed by Sadia Quddus and Dougal Henken
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.