PROOF: Critic-in-Residence Talk with Dylan Volk

This presentation of Dylan's work on the artist Greer Lankton will be followed by a conversation with founding director of the Violet, Aubrey Calaway.

Dylan Volk is a historian of contemporary art and visual culture. They are a PhD candidate in the History of Art at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, where they are completing the dissertation "Lesbian Aesthetics and the Body Impolitic, 1990–1999." Their writing appears or is forthcoming in caa.reviews and History of Photography.

Aubrey Calaway is an artist and curator based in Portland, Maine. Moving between performance, visual art, and writing, his work focuses on how belief, sex, and the human are manufactured in contemporary American culture. He founded the Violet Institute for Contemporary Trans Culture in 2026.

Greer Lankton (1958-1996) was an American artist known for her avant-garde doll sculpture. A key figure in the East Village art scene of 1980s New York City, she exhibited her first full-scale installation artwork at the Mattress Factory Museum shortly before her death at age 38.

Violet Institute for Contemporary Trans Culture

The Violet collects and interprets contemporary trans culture, for everyone. Based in Portland, Maine, it works towards a future in which understanding of transness is deepened through art, scholarship, and conversation.

The Violet's programming is open to all. We invite anyone with an interest in photography, art history, and cultural criticism to this event, regardless of identity.

This event is hosted in collaboration with the Bakery Photo Collective.

Event venue

The Bakery Photographic Collective, 630 Forest Avenue, Portland, United States

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