AMBER DAVIS TOURLENTES
Visiting Lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies

From the "Swag" series, courtesy of the artist.

Tourlentes grew up in the 70s–80s in the gay community with her father. For thirteen years she has photographed the same sex parented family movement, including her own extended family. The photographic projects investigates the reworking of not only gender but also ethnic, religious and cultural/class roles for family life, lobbyist groups, coalitions and (corporate sponsorship and the portrayal of shifting LGBT community in the media). Unexpectedly, so far in this body of work, it is class more than gender that has emerged as a defining family social structure. Tourlentes’s current work on exhibition examines the processes of identification and inclusion as evidenced with the corporate “swag” handed out during Gay Pride Parades; collected beginning in 2000 until present. The swag marketed to the LGBT communities at Gay Pride Parades represents the mobility and the constant re-definition of the territory of political community and the effect of the increasing visibility of the LGBT family and lifestyle within the larger society. A native of Boston’s South End, Tourlentes received her MFA in Photography + Digital Media at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has taught photography at Princeton University, Massachusetts College of Art, Emerson College & ProArts Consortium and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Some of Amber’s solo and invited group exhibitions include Axiom Gallery, Lesley University, Smith College, Hampshire College, APE Gallery, WORKS, San Jose, Harvery Milk Institute, Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, Circa Gallery in Montreal, Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, ArtStrand, Provincetown and the Boston Public Library.

www.ambertourlentes.com

Artist Talk: Thursday, Februrary 23, 2012, Room B-04, 6 pm