Looking Outwards 08

Paul Soulellis

An artist and professor at RISD interested in the meaning of crisis and Urgent Craft, as well as permanence, Paul Soulellis introduces himself as a queer artist and educator. As a child and young adult, Soulellis grappled with the self-hatred that came with being gay in the 70s and 80s as the AIDS crisis swept the nation. Since then, his queerness has deeply impacted his artistic practice. Although he recognizes his privileges, the difficult process of becoming secure in his sexuality was deeply entwined with a sense of urgency. Yet, Soulellis argues that slowing down in today’s society is inherently queer because it goes against the cultural fixation with acceleration. In response to this idea, he created the body of work: QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK (2013-2018), which is a vast series of printed web publications from queer artists, aiming to immortalize the fast-paced culture of internet art. Since this first foray into printing websites, Soulellis has created many collections of printed internet images, published books of redacted tweets from politicians, zines of digital protests, and many other examples of printed literature. Although the digital world is ever-expansive, I greatly admire that Soulellis continues to create physical copies of the art and protest material that is so indicative of our generation.