Laur(en/ce) Myers Reese (she/he/they; née Laura) (b. 1989, OK, USA) is an interdisciplinary creative, arts educator, and cultural administrator living on occupied Southern Paiute lands, in the unincorporated town of Paradise, NV. Her work is cross-disciplinary, using music, theater, sculpture, and painting to explore a range of topics related to the body, identity, and land. Their research as an academic investigates the use of queer semiotics to navigate and disrupt cis-normative history.
Drawing on Jewish scholarship, trans aesthetics, Latinx diaspora, and socialist doikayt, she works in video, painting, installation, fiber work, sound and sculpture. He has performed at KillJoy Collective (Portland, Oregon), Front/Space (Kansas City, Missouri) and 21C Museum Hotel (Bentonville, Arkansas). Her work has been featured locally in the Las Vegas Weekly, and internationally on Hyperallergic.
She received her MFA from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2022, and BFA in Studio Art from the University of Oklahoma, Norman in 2012. While at UNLV, Reese founded the Vegas Institute for Contemporary Engagement, a research lab for art and experimentation.
Lauren has worked as an independent curator, arts writer, non-profit administrator, factory worker, educator, and art gallery director. His writing has been published in Southwest Contemporary, Couch in the Desert, Art Focus Oklahoma, and Journal for American Jewish Studies. She has worked in both non-profit administrative and curatorial roles: as administrative coordinator for the monumental land art City by Michael Heizer, as programs coordinator for the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition; executive director of Individual Artists of Oklahoma; and as a participant in the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s regional Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship.
Reese is an active curator and has organized exhibitions for the Barrick Museum of Art (Las Vegas, NV), Living Arts (Tulsa, OK), MAINSITE Contemporary (Norman, OK), Academia Non Grata (Pärnu, Estonia), Individual Artists of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK), and the Urban Land Institute, among others.
Currently, Laurence works as youth program coordinator for Clark County Public Arts and as adjunct faculty in art at the College of Southern Nevada.
STATEMENT
Queer narratives reveal the precariousness of binaries. I reflect on the trauma of these oppressive binaries (gay/straight, able/disabled, cis/trans, male/female, top/bottom, normal/queer, migrant/native, sterile/erotic, human/nature). These systems limit progress.
Using watercolor, video, sound art, performance, and sculpture, I draw on queer collective memory, language studies, opera, narratives of migration, the desert landscape, Jewish mysticism, femme magic, and my own lived experience.
I approach making with a desire for queer utopia. My work sometimes caters to marginalized audiences and I often employ insider cultural touchstones that act as hidden reference points and clues to narrative.