Queering the Archive: A Conversation with Josh Faught and Chris E. Vargas

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Josh Faught: Sanctuary at the Henry Art Gallery and moderated by Mattilda Berstein Sycamore, this conversation between artists Josh Faught and Chris E. Vargas explores their respective interventions into and queered reimaginings of the archive. Intertwined with local histories by way of Faught’s archival research with the Tim Mayhew Collection on Gay Rights for Sanctuary and Vargas’ Pacific Northwest-focused presentation of Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects at the Henry, this conversation considers the ways in which each of these artist’s practices complicate the archive’s assumed forms and values, examining the slippages between individual, collective, and institutional memory.

Josh Faught’s exhibition at the Henry highlights Sanctuary (2017), a monumental tapestry commissioned by Western Bridge for Seattle’s Saint Mark’s Cathedral and now part of the Henry’s collection. The work features a rich array of found and archival materials, weaving together spirituality, history, and pop culture, and evoking stories of connection and isolation in queer history. Also exploring queer history, Chris E. Vargas is the founder and Executive Director of The Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA), a multiform project encompassing exhibitions, performances, and virtual programming which examines the visual histories of transgender life and the fluid archival forms that hold and produce these histories.

In Queering the Archive, Faught and Vargas explore alternative forms of queer remembrance, reimagining social and cultural systems of classification to ask what is present, what is absent, what is remembered, and what is reproduced.

Josh Faught’s work uses pop cultural detritus, archival materials, and the vernacular of textiles to address the relationships between language, community, and the constructions of identity. Recent solo exhibitions include Sanctuary, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Look Across the Water into the Darkness, Look for the Fog, Wattis Institute, San Francisco; Both Things are True, Koppe Astner, Glasgow; Mr. Kramer Builds His Dream House, Casa Loewe, London; Siyinqaba, US Embassy in Swaziland, Mbabane; BE BOLD for what you stand for, BE CAREFUL what you fall for, SFMoMA at the Neptune Society Columbarium, San Francisco; and Snacks, Supports, and Something to Rally Around, Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis. Faught has exhibited in group exhibitions at James Cohan Gallery, New York; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Sadie Coles HQ, London; The New Museum, New York; ICA Boston; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit. Faught is a Professor at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and a recipient of a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA (previously Bellingham, WA) whose work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical & institutional memory and popular culture. He earned his MFA in the department of Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011. He is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award, a 2020 John S. Guggenheim fellowship, and in 2024/2025 was a Latinx Artist Fellow. Vargas is the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, a critical and conceptual arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author, most recently, of Touching the Art, a finalist for a Washington State Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Book Award. Her previous title, The Freezer Door, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, she’s the author of seven books, and the editor of six anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. Sycamore’s new novel, Terry Dactyl, will be out in November. The book launch will be at the Seattle Art Museum at 3 pm on Saturday, October 25.