Organized in collaboration with curator and researcher Javier Arellano Vences from the Vincent Price Art Museum, Human Resources Los Angeles is pleased to present ​Angel Alvarado: Geovani’s Room​, the artist’s first solo exhibition. The exhibition features photographs, a single-channel video, and an immersive installation as well as a closing reception performance by Alyss Glass. Alvarado’s work investigates the commodification of queer visibility and the dissemination of a canon that situates white cisgender men at the pinnacle of queer sensuality and sexuality, while concurrently commenting on issues specific to ​brown​ queerness.​ ​Through image appropriation, manipulation, performance, and the insertion of ​brown​ bodies, Alvarado sabotages constructed realities that are fixated on a homogenized queer experience, ultimately renouncing conditioned aspirations that often lead to a negative body image and body dysmorphia. Alyss Glass’s newly commissioned performance, ​Geovani’s Room​, provides a reflection onbrown​ queer melancholy. A melancholy that stems from navigating internal violence within personal relationships as in James Baldwin’s novel, ​Giovanni’s Room​, and the enduring of external efforts by an array of people and groups to shape gender performativity and gender identity. The fragility of these rigid structures can be seen and heard through the slowed down phonetic reading of the artist’s name, Alyss Glass, “all is glass,” a gesture towards the imminent shattering of these fallacious mechanisms. Image Credit: ​Angel Alvarado, ​a touch of the neck,​ 2019. Digital collage on Inkjet Print. Courtesy of the artist.