{"id":29186,"date":"2026-05-08T08:45:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/?p=29186"},"modified":"2026-05-08T08:45:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:45:42","slug":"writer-carmen-maria-machado-turns-curator-for-a-subversive-new-show-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/?p=29186","title":{"rendered":"Writer Carmen Maria Machado Turns Curator for a Subversive New Show in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Without question, Carmen Maria Machado<\/a> is best known for her writing; just three years after the publication of her critically celebrated short story collection Her Body and Other Parties<\/em>, Machado\u2019s 2019 memoir, In the Dream House<\/em>, won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction.<\/p>\n

This week, however, the Pennsylvania-born author celebrated the opening of \u201cThe Object of Power is Power<\/a>,\u201d an exhibition of the work of contemporary Cuban artist Roc\u00edo Garc\u00eda that Machado curated for New York\u2019s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not have any kind of educational background in visual art, so it\u2019s funny that I\u2019ve been doing a lot of collaborations with visual artists<\/a> over the last decade,\u201d Machado tells me as we walk through the spacious, light-filled gallery at the Leslie-Lohman that currently houses about a dozen of Garc\u00eda\u2019s works. \u201cIt\u2019s not me coming at it from the perspective of an art historian or something, it\u2019s more me asking: What is my creative response to this work?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

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Installation view of Roc\u00edo Garc\u00eda: The Object of Power is Power<\/em>, curated by Carmen Maria Machado (Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, May 6\u2013September 20, 2026).<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Garrett Carroll. \u00a9 2026 Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Themes of power, pain, desire, sexuality, and fear animate much of Machado\u2019s work as well as Garc\u00eda\u2019s, making a multimedia collaboration between the two creatives feel especially apropos. Machado, who is also of Cuban descent, notes that while working with Garc\u00eda, who lives in Havana, posed certain logistical challenges\u2014\u201csince bringing stuff out of Cuba is pretty hard right now\u201d\u2014encountering the artist\u2019s work in person was a revelation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy is Jack the Punisher, and he reappears in another series over here,\u201d Machado tells me of a BDSM-clad figure on one wall of the exhibition. \u201cRoc\u00edo has such a narrative, the art almost feels closer to a short story collection or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans of Machado\u2019s singular, knife-sharp writing voice won\u2019t be disappointed by the text she\u2019s contributed to Garc\u00eda\u2019s show, which reads, in part: \u201cHow many times have you begged someone to tie you up? How many times have you begged someone to untie you? Why do pleasure and terror hover so close together in the blue light? Why do we insist on love laced with suspicion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Object of Power is Power\u201d is on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art through September 20.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Without question, Carmen Maria Machado is best known for her writing; just three years after the publication of her critically celebrated short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, Machado\u2019s 2019 memoir, In the Dream House, won the 2020 Lambda…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fashion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hunthow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}