How a 1972 Motorcycle became the conceptual heart of the new show at Company Gallery.

For the inaugural show at its new space, Company Gallery has mounted the first solo show in New York dedicated to the feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer since her death in 2019. Titled “Tell me there is a lesbian forever…”, the show is curated by artist and filmmaker Tiona Nekkia McClodden, who delved deep into Hammer’s archive to gather videos, photos, and drawings from the first few decades of her practice starting in the late 1960s, when she came out as a lesbian, rode off on a motorcycle with a Super-8 camera, and started creating her experimental films, such as Dyketactics in 1974.

The exhibition, which also features a range of material from Hammer’s papers—love letters, diaristic poems, and her copy of an FBI report on mid-century lesbian rights group the Daughters of Bilitis—performs the labor of building queer community, forging affective bonds across time and across generations. McClodden’s insightful presentation of Hammer’s early work looks at a much beloved figure from new angles, insisting on its relevance for younger queer people.

Read the full interview at artnet.com