James Hosking
Visual Art
Chicago, IL
James Hosking is a Chicago-based visual artist whose work explores LGBTQ+ communities and archives through photography, film, and collage. He is a former MacDowell Fellow in visual arts, artist in residence at Latitude, and Art Director of the Chicago Reader. His work has screened internationally and appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Economist, The Atlantic, WIRED, The Baffler, and many other publications.
He developed a multimedia project examining identity, aging, and labor among veteran drag performers in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood entitled “Beautiful By Night.” It included a documentary that he directed, produced, and edited. The project was featured in exhibitions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) and the Tenderloin Museum in San Francisco, as well as in a solo exhibition at the University of Michigan.
He was a HATCH resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC) where he presented a series of collages entitled “The Personals” with support from an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. The works are made from LGBTQ+ print material, borne out of a long-term engagement with Chicago’s Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. Set between 1966 and 1981, the collages are inspired by LGBTQ+ personal ads and their authors. The pieces imagine how the era they lived in—and the print media they consumed—shaped their psyches and hopes for connection in the pre-digital age. He is the recipient of an Individual Artists Program grant from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) to support “The Personals.”
Pieces from the series have been featured in group shows at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Gerber/Hart Library & Archives, and the Chicago Cultural Center, as well as in a solo exhibition at the Evanston Public Library, co-presented with Hive Center for the Book Arts. The series was featured on the cover and in a portfolio in the East Window Journal of Written & Visual Arts. He was commissioned by the Pardon Collection, publishers of Collé, to create a group of new pieces for “The Personals.”