By John Killacky

Throughout their anthology, Nayland Blake reminds readers of the importance of maintaining authenticity and self-representation in every facet of creative work.

My Studio Is A Dungeon Is The Studio: Writings and Interviews, 1983–2024 by Nayland Blake. Edited by Jarrett Earnest. Duke University Press, 368 pages, $28.95.

This new collection of writing and interviews by the multi-hyphenated creative spirit Nayland Blake, My Studio Is A Dungeon Is The Studio illuminates the rich interconnections among their art-making, activism, curation, and teaching over the last four decades. This is a time filled with government-encouraged erasures and self-censorship, so the volume is an essential read for those interested in pioneering art practices and queer aesthetics.

Blake’s hybrid visual explorations take myriad forms ranging from sculpture and performance to video and installation. Their various installations, found-material sculptures, puppets, drawings, costumes, performances, and videos invite viewers into the artist’s fears, fetishes, and delight, places where they explore gender, kink, and racial norms. Their work has been widely exhibited, collected by major museums and is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery. MIT’s List Visual Arts Center hosted a retrospective, entitled No Wrong Holes, in 2021.

Early in their career, Blake co-curated, with Lawrence Rinder, In a Different Light (1995), a show at the Berkeley Art Museum that examined the impact of queer sensibilities on contemporary art before the reframing that came with AIDS. These early influencers included Fluxus renegades from the ‘60s as well as feminist icons from the ‘70s. The catalogue has become foundational in understanding LGBTQ art history.

In 1996, Blake moved to New York where they continued to create provocative intermedia objects as well as curating and lecturing. They are currently the co-director of the Studio Arts Program at Bard College. Throughout their career, Blake’s commentaries have appeared in a wide array of publications. A potpourri of these writings, along with some unpublished material and transcribed conversations, is featured in this new compilation.

The pieces here are eclectic, ranging from the academic to the playful. Transgressive performance scripts on racial hybridity and sadomasochistic practices are interspersed with pieces that are nonlinear, intentionally self-conscious, and profoundly personal. Less serious is a Tom of Finland appreciation and excerpts from pornography reviews they wrote for the gay weekly Bay Area Reporter. There’s a “sci-fi porn story” thrown in for good measure.

For creatives, Blake provides helpful tips on coming up with artistic statements, “100 Assignments” for curriculum, as well as art-making and self-improvement ideas. Also included: loving musings that celebrate Jack Smith’s sexy camp extravagances, Nancy Grossman’s misunderstood leather-masked sculptures, Ray Johnson’s hermetic collages and mail-art, and Kathy Acker’s punk appropriation of found texts that focus on abject themes.

Blake’s interviews and other essays illuminate the intersection between the artist’s sexuality and their work: “I started making art that tried to overlay these two experiences on top of each other, finding narratives to fit the technology and props of BDSM. I saw what those two worlds had to offer each other, and I tried to help others see it.”

Throughout the anthology, Blake reminds readers of the importance of maintaining authenticity and self-representation in every facet of creative work. Artist, writer, educator, and curator –for them, it is all the same practice. The landing page of Blake’s website sums up their inspiring activist sensibility: “Teach it – Promote it – Create it – you are responsible for the continuation of the culture you love. Keep it alive through your actions.” A resonant credo for all!

John R. Killacky is the author of because art: commentary, critique, & conversation.