Jonathan Molina-Garcia The Bethesda Brotherhood

The project shadows self-identified, HIV-positive men over 50 years of age, whom the artist met on a gay cruising website. Taking their shared HIV status as a starting point, the project includes photographic prints, performances for the camera, and book media that emerge out of the intergenerational exchange of knowledge and understanding at the crux of their interactions.

Jonathan Molina-Garcia is a Salvadoran-American, photo-based media artist residing in Dallas, TX.

His projects are committed to experiments in sharing. A citizen of the third world and an American DREAMER, his work looks at various topical and social themes in national and sexual identity. Primarily a collage artist, his mediums of interest also include time-based actions – performance art and video documentation; book-making and labor crafts.

He holds an MFA degree in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), and graduated with dual degrees in Photography and Art History from the University of North Texas. Recent exhibitions include In Sickness at Texas Woman’s University and Transmission Reentry at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Nasher Microgrant and has been awarded various other developmental grants from organizations including the artist-run Art Tooth gallery, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, and The Dallas Museum of Art.

He is currently a visiting lecturer in photography at Southern Methodist University.

Matthew Lax (b. Baltimore, MD) is an artist, filmmaker, and writer currently based in Los Angeles, CA. His moving-image work and writing focuses on the intersection of politics and everyday life, with particular attention to issues of labor, queer histories, and the construction of language and cultural systems.

His film and video works have been screened and exhibited nationally and internationally with the Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), MIX New York (New York, NY) and MIX Brasil (São Paulo), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), LA Film Forum (Los Angeles), and Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin). Curatorial projects include those in partnership with the Torrance Art Museum (CA), Acud Macht Neu Collective (Berlin), Human Resources (Los Angeles), the Echo Park Film Center (Los Angeles), and Anthology Film Archives (New York). His writing has appeared in print and online publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), ArtPractical (San Francisco), and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA).