Friday May 16, 7pm ET
Artist Talk: Ayanna Dozier
In conversation with Jesse Bandler Firestone
In-Person and Live-Streamed
The conversation starts at 7:10pm ET. If not visible, please reload the page.
Microscope is very pleased to present an artist talk with Ayanna Dozier in connection with her current solo exhibition at the gallery “Get on Your Knees, Jesus Loves You.” Dozier will be joined in the conversation by New York-based curator and writer Jesse Bandler Firestone. Admission is free.
The discussion will revolve around Dozier’s new body of work — consisting of 16mm films, film installations, and photographic works on leather — which are motivated by her experience in Christian Fundamentalist church as a teenager. Themes include subservience, repression, sex and sexuality, and the mixed messaging found within Christianity on these subjects — including within biblical and other religious writings — and also draw upon the artist’s personal experience as an erotic laborer, among other references.
The talk will also address Dozier’s inventive use of analog processes and technologies such as printing photographs on leather and creating a multi-projection installation with a single film.
The in-person event will also be live-streamed on this page.
“Get on Your Knees, Jesus Loves You” continues through Saturday May 31st. Further information about the exhibition can be found HERE
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Ayanna Dozier (b. 1990 in Riverside, CA) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Dozier’s practice employs performance, experimental film, printmaking, and photography — using auto-fiction, surrealist, conceptual, and feminist methods — to image narratives on transactional intimacy, sexual justice, and interpersonal trauma. Her works have been exhibited at The Shed, New York, NY; Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY; Fragment, New York, NY; BRIC Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Arlington, VA; Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC; and Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Dozier’s work will be featured in an upcoming screening and conversation at The Walker Art Center Minneapolis, MN in May 2025. Her films have previously screened at institutions and festivals including Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY; Prismatic Ground, New York, NY; Crossroads Festival, San Francisco, CA; Media City Film Festival, Windsor, Ontario, CA; and at Berwick Film Festival and Open City Documentary Festival, London, UK. Her works have been reviewed, among others, in The New York Times, and Hyperallergic. Dozier was a 2024 Penumbra Workspace Resident, a 2022 Wave Hill Winter Workspace Resident, a 2018–2019 Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Studies Program, and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow from 2017–2022 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Dozier’s works have recently entered institutions including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, in Washington DC (2025) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York (2023).
Jesse Bandler Firestone is an independent curator and writer based in New York. His work explores conceptual art, emerging trends, queerness, institutional critique, and exhibition-making as a form of social practice. He has produced over seventy commissions across installation, performance, and interdisciplinary collaboration.