RUINS: PERFORMING QUEER HISTORY
Amy Adler, Ken Gonzales-Day, Cat Gunn, William E. Jones, Morgan Lieberman, Stephen Milner, Darian Newman, Matt Savitsky, and Joe Yorty
Curated by Nathan Storey
May 2 - June 13, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION on SATURDAY, MAY 2, 5 to 8pm
BEST PRACTICE is pleased to present RUINS: PERFORMING QUEER HISTORY, curated by Nathan Storey. RUINS is an iterative exhibition of interdisciplinary artists reckoning with queer histories, archives, and loss within their own contemporary studio practices. The artists in RUINS unearth LGBTQ+ histories, search for the fragmentary pieces, and reimagine our queer constellations.
This second iteration of RUINS surveys intergenerational California-based artists whose works explore queer embodiment, intimacy, and space across drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and painting. The exhibition includes work by Amy Adler, Ken Gonzales-Day, Cat Gunn, William E. Jones, Morgan Lieberman, Stephen Milner, Darian Newman, Matt Savitsky, and Joe Yorty
Archives are alive, pulsing with history, memory, and ruin. Simultaneously, they are fragmentary, evoking a longing for a time and place you cannot name. Archives bridge the past, present, and future, symbolic of the inevitability of our time slipping away.
There is a current movement of queer artists looking backward and engaging with various queer archives or legacies within their contemporary studio practices. This deep preoccupation with the queer archive is, in part, due to the lingering and residual effects of the AIDS crisis, an utter catastrophe ignored and perpetuated by the United States government, leading to the loss of an entire generation—a crisis, which 45 years later, is still not yet over. The urgency of this archival engagement is now inflamed as the Trump Administration again attempts to erase and remove all traces of queer and gender expansive histories, which we know have always existed in any histories of America. The afterlife of ephemera becomes a tactic of resistance. To perform queer history, to grapple with our collective pasts, allows us to look toward our queer futures.
www.nathanstoreyarchive.com
@___nathans
www.undertoweditions.com
@undertow_editions
UPCOMING
Cat Gunn & Mika Castañeda
July 11 - August 15, 2026
Noé Olivas
September 12 - October 17, 2026
Jertsin Crosby & Tara Merenda Nelson
curated by Joshua Tonies
November 14 - December 19, 2026
Ghost Agency (Anni Garza Lau + Gro Sarauw)
curated by Doreen Rios
February 13 - March 20, 2027
1955 Julian Avenue
San Diego, CA 92113
map
25th/Commercial on the Orange Line
Barrio Logan on the Blue Line
Gallery hours (during exhibitions):
Tuesday - Saturday
11am - 4pm