Mark Cagaanan Aguhar (May 16, 1987 – March 12, 2012) was an American activist, writer and

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and

transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...

femme-identified. Aguhar was made famous by her

Tumblr Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...

blog that questioned the mainstream representation of the "glossy glorification of the gay white male body".

Life

Aguhar was born May 16, 1987, in

Houston, Texas Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, in a

Filipino American Filipino Americans () are Americans of Filipino ancestry. Filipinos in North America were first documented in the 16th century and other small settlements beginning in the 18th century. Mass migration did not begin until after the end of the Sp ...

family. She attended the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. Aguhar's works include performance-based pieces,

watercolors Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the S ...

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

s, and

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

. Often the work was of self-portraits with hair extensions, make-up, gender-specific clothing and a beautiful, unashamed portrait of herself, curves and all and reminds the viewer that Aguhar's life and mere existence was an act of confronting white hegemony. Aguhar maintained an online presence on Tumblr, which hosted both her professional and personal websites. As Tumblr user "calloutqueen," she titled her blog "BLOGGING FOR BROWN GURLS," posting her thoughts about sexuality, sex, dating, gender, and her work. Aguhar was only a few months away from earning her

MFA degree A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) when she died by suicide in Chicago, Illinois, on March 12, 2012.

Legacy

Since 2012, there is a "Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant" available through ''Chances Dances'' for queer artists of color. In 2013, artist

Edie Fake Edie Fake (born 1980) is an American artist, illustrator, author, and transgender activist. Fake is known for their comics/zines, gouache and ink paintings, and murals. Fake has an award winning comic-zine series about Gaylord Phoenix, a bird-li ...

had the exhibition titled, "Memory Palaces" in Chicago and paid tribute to five artists and friends that had died, one of which was Mark Aguhar. The 2015–2016 exhibition, ''Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics,'' started the tour at

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

and was created in order to explore the meaning of trans and what defines transgender aesthetic in many different forms of artwork. Other transgender artists and archivists participating in this exhibition included:

Niv Acosta Niv Acosta (born May 1988) is a transgender American dancer, choreographer and artist. His project Discotropic was featured in the Triennial at the New Museum in 2015. Acosta aims to address larger modern concepts through his work and his work rev ...

, Math Bass, ,

Justin Vivian Bond Justin Vivian Bond (born May 9, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and actor, who is transgender. Described as "the best cabaret artist of

heir Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offi ...

generation" and a "tornado of art and activism", they first achieved prominence under the pseud ...

, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz,

Vaginal Davis Vaginal Davis (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American performer, painter, independent curator, composer, film-maker and writer. Born intersex and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Davis gained notoriety in New York during the 1980s ...

Zackary Drucker Zackary Drucker (born 1983) is an American multimedia artist, cultural producer, LGBT social movements, LGBT activist, actress, and television producer. She is an Emmy Awards, Emmy-nominated producer for the docu-series ''This Is Me'' (2015), a co ...

, Chloe Dzubilo,

Tourmaline Tourmaline ( ) is a crystalline silicate mineral, silicate mineral group in which boron is chemical compound, compounded with chemical element, elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium. This gemstone comes in a ...

with Sasha Wortzel,

Juliana Huxtable Juliana Huxtable (born December 29, 1987) is an American artist, writer, performer, DJ, and co-founder of the New York–based nightlife project Shock Value. Huxtable has exhibited and performed at a number of venues including Reena Spaulings F ...

, Greer Lankton,

Pierre Molinier Pierre Molinier (April 13, 1900 – March 3, 1976) was a French painter, photographer and "maker of objects". Early life and education Pierre Molinier was born in Agen, France, and spent most of his life in Bordeaux. He began his artistic ca ...

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...

Flawless Sabrina Flawless Sabrina (September 10, 1939 – November 18, 2017), also known as Mother Flawless Sabrina, was an American LGBT activist, drag queen, performer, and actress, based in New York City. Flawless Sabrina was a pioneer for transgender people a ...

, Buzz Slutzky, and Chris Vargas with the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art. Her poem "Litanies to My Heavenly Brown Body" was widely circulated after the 2016

Orlando nightclub shooting On , 2016, 29-year-old Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States before Orlando Police officers fatally shot him after a three-hour standoff. I ...

. In the publication "Proximity: On the Work of Mark Aguhar," (2015), writer Roy Pérez examines Aguhar's drawings, videos, live acts, and writings as performances of closeness, and as critiques of racism, transphobia, and fat phobia. Pérez highlights the complexity of Aguhar's queerness and "not wanting to form attachments within the dominant normative society".

Select exhibitions

* 2009: ''No Lone Zone'', Creative Research Lab, Austin, Texas * 2009: ''New American Talent, The Twenty-fourth Exhibition,''

Arthouse at the Jones Center The Jones Center on Congress Avenue, formerly known as the AMOA-Arthouse at the Jones Center, is one of two museum sites of the Contemporary Austin, in Texas. History Founded as the Texas Fine Arts Association (TFAA) in 1911, the organization's ...

, Contemporary Art for Texas, Austin, Texas * 2010: ''Ideas of Mountains'', Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, Texas * 2010: ''Boiz Club'', Box13 ArtSpace, Houston, Texas * 2011: ''M4M, '' Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas * 2012: ''Torch Song'', Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, Illinois * 2012: ''The Dragon is the Frame Performances, ''Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, Illinois *2015: ''Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics'', 41 Cooper Gallery,

The Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

, New York City, New York * 2016: ''Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics'', Glass Curtain Gallery,

Columbia College Chicago Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1890, it has 6,493 students (as of fall 2021) pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It i ...

, Chicago, Illinois *2016: ''Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between archives and aesthetics'', Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery,

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Fr ...

, Haverford, Pennsylvania *2019: ''"Nobody Promised You Tomorrow": Art 50 Years After Stonewall,''

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

, Brooklyn, New York

References

External links

Mark Aguhar's portfolio
on

In memoriam: Mark Aguhar, 1987–2012
in TimeOut Chicago
Mark Aguhar, 1987–2012 Obituary
in

The Awl ''The Awl'' was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid." History Founded in April 2009 by David Cho and former ''Gawker'' editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk ...

Essay on Hyperallergic

Mark Aguhar's Critical Flippancy on Bully Bloggers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aguhar, Mark 1987 births 2012 deaths 2012 suicides 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists 21st-century American LGBTQ people American transgender artists American transgender women American LGBTQ rights activists American Internet celebrities Activists from Houston American queer artists American artists of Filipino descent Artists from Houston Suicides in Illinois Transgender women artists University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts alumni University of Illinois Chicago alumni