arms ache avid aeon is a project conceived by Jo-ey Tang in collaboration with founding members of the art collective fierce pussy: Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard and Carrie Yamaoka. fierce pussy formed around queer and AIDS activism in 1991 in New York City. Since 2015, each exhibition chapter examines relationships between individual and collective art practices in counterpoint to the political landscape. Chapter Nine gathers works made from 1991 through 2026, reconsidered here amid climate collapse and a global authoritarian turn.
Brody manifested limits of the body and objects by carving voids and embedding metal forms into existing structures. They altered found objects to centre the imaginative power of repair. Episalla transmutes photographic paper through brackish water, chemical baths and physical actions, harnessing the generative power of damage. In Leonard’s photography and installations, elemental forces of nature intervene with mechanisms of power, control and surveillance. Yamaoka works with a restrained vocabulary of reflective mylar film, black vinyl and resin, in a method that intuits alchemical outcomes and gestures at social erasures.
For the artists, marginal spaces and precarious ruins offer potential for metamorphosis. During the Biennale Arte 2026, two projects by fierce pussy connect to the collective’s history, reclaiming public spaces as sites of inclusion. A pair of bilingual poster works appear on walls across Venice, while the Biglietteria Scarpa, a former ticket office at the Giardini, is repurposed as a space of welcome.
—Jo-ey Tang
