NADA New York 2024

Michela Griffo

Projects: Booth P28
May 2–5, 2024

548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

VIP Preview (by invitation):
Thursday, May 2, 10am–4pm

Open to the Public:
Thursday, May 2, 4–7pm
Friday, May 3, 11am–7pm
Saturday, May 4, 11am–7pm
Sunday, May 5, 11am–5pm

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Stellarhighway is honored to stage a solo presentation by Michela Griffo of her large-scale paintings and drawings from the 1980s for NADA New York 2024. These older bodies of work have gone mostly unseen for the better part of forty years—having been destroyed or kept hidden—and this will mark the first focused presentation of Griffo’s historic work since then.

Michela Griffo (b. 1949, Rochester, NY) is an artist and activist who came of age on the piers and streets of New York City in the 1950s and ’60s. She was an early member of the Redstockings and a founding member of Radicalesbians, Lavender Menace and the Gay Liberation Front. She was active in the Civil Rights, Women’s Rights and Gay Rights Movements, working closely with activists such as Yoruba Guzman and radical organizations such as The Young Lords. She risked her life with other queer activists on the front lines to pave the way for younger generations to come out and live safe and productive lives. For decades Griffo’s visual art practice has centered on exposing societal injustices and fictional narratives, exploring themes such as the queer and lesbian woman’s voice, as well as childhood trauma and addiction. Her work often uses primary colors to depict familiar scenes, but has also utilized expertly composed muted colors and soft shadows paired with graphite drawings in order to critique issues of class, sexism, racism and divisive rhetoric that are often not rooted in the reality of our shared experience.

Griffo exhibited widely in the 1970s and 1980s, and has been included in several important queer art shows, such as the seminal traveling group exhibition Art After Stonewall: 1969-1989 (Leslie-Lohman Museum, Columbus Museum, Frost Museum; 2019-2020) and Queer Forms (Katherine Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, 2019). Historical exhibitions include those at The Alternative Museum, New York, NY; Soho Center for Visual Artists, New York, NY; Josef Gallery, New York, NY; Alexander Milliken, New York, NY; Flint Institute of the Arts, Flint, MI; and, Aldrich Museum for Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT.; The DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at SPOKE Gallery, Boston, MA; Pen + Brush Gallery, New York, NY; and group shows at Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, NY; ArtspaceNH, New Haven CT, Plaxell Gallery, Long Island City, NY; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; Housatonic Museum, Bridgeport, CT; Artists Space, New York, NY; Exit Art, New York, NY; NY. Additionally, Griffo has been interviewed by Steve Dansky (The LGBT Pioneers Oral History Project), Mason Funk (Outwords Archive), Mike Balaban (stories from the LGBTQ Community), Andrew Rimby (Ivory Tower Boiler Room), August Bernadicou (LGBTQ History Project) and Mark Lynch (NPR/Boston Public Radio), as well as the Arthur Dong Documentary for PBS and WGBH Boston “A Question of Equality: Outrage ‘69” (1995); and has been featured in ArtNews, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. Collections include Treadwell Corporation, Chemical Bank and the Leslie-Lohman Museum. The artist is currently based in New York.

Please contact Stellarhighway for more information.