Announcing New Editor: Gelare Khoshgozaran
April 2021
After many years of working together as a writer, collaborator and co-thinker, we are pleased to announce that Gelare Khoshgozaran will be joining MARCH as a new editor.
Photo: Jimena Sarno
Gelare is an “undisciplinary” artist and writer who received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2011. We first worked with Gelare for Temporary Art Review in 2015 with her essay, “Belaboring the Fringe: in lieu of an Artist Statement,” which was later included in our five year anthology To Make a Public, alongside multiple works in the corresponding exhibition held at The Luminary such as “Drone Operator,” a performance that took place at a local karaoke bar following the opening reception. In 2017, we also shared panels with Gelare concerning “Strategic Criticism” and “Art Writing” at the Common Field Covening in Los Angeles.
Gelare has written for The Brooklyn Rail, Parkett, X-TRA, LA Review of Books, Art Practical, Ajam Media Collective, and Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp. MIT Press co-published by the New Museum). She was the recipient of a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2015), Art Matters Award (2017), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2019), and a Graham Foundation Award (2020).
In March 2016, Gelare co-founded contemptorary (with Eunsong Kim and later Nasrin Himada), which focused on radical aesthetics from queer perspectives and women of color. Through its final issue in May 2018, contemptorary spotlighted stories on refugees and migration, perspectives that undo the rationale of permanent collections, and correspondences that write alongside, and with artworks.
Gelare Khoshgozaran. “Rocket Rain موشک باران” (installation view), 2016. Human Resources, Los Angeles.
As an artist, Gelare’s practice centers on deeply embodied archival research. For example, her work “Rocket Rain موشک باران ” (exhibited at Human Resources in 2016), was developed from her investigation of the Iranian Newspaper Kayhan (Cosmos) from the nine months (1985-1986) during which the artist’s mother was pregnant with her during the Iran-Iraq War. Notably, Gelare’s artistic practice not only draws from the interconnectedness of landscapes, memories, and dreams to acknowledge the inherent violence in national security structures, but also envisions alternatives to the well-trodden narratives of nation and war which extends into organizing and radically rethinking art spaces as well.
In addition to presenting solo and group exhibitions at the New Museum, Queens Museum, Hammer Museum, LAXART, Human Resources, Visitor Welcome Center, Plug In ICA, Articule, Cell Project Space, LOOP Barcelona, Beursschouwburg, and Museo Ex Teresa Arte Actual among others, Gelare is currently a lecturer at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts.
As an editor at MARCH, Gelare will bring her perspective and vast expertise in curating critical essays that address the urgent need for institutional remodeling and global solidarity. You can read her essay “A Syllabus for Antifascist Cinema” in our Dispatches archive from last summer and (as a member of Human Resources) Gelare organized our MARCH 01 launch event “October, November, and March: How has the Weather Changed?” last fall which can be read online here and here.
Please join us in welcoming Gelare Khoshgozaran to our editorial team. We look forward to continuing to grow these critical conversations together.