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Joey Terrill is a formative figure in the Los Angeles Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism. Painting and making art since the 1970s, Terrill has always explored the intersection of Chicano and gay male identity (where they overlap and where they clash) as a strategy for much of his art production.
A native Angeleno, he attended Immaculate Heart College and lists influences as diverse as Pop Art, Corita Kent, David Hockney, Mexican retablos, and 20th-century painters ranging from Romaine Brooks to Frida Kahlo. His work conveys the energy, politics and creative synergy of Chicano and queer art circles in Los Angeles.
His works from the 1970s and 80s are considered pioneering examples of a queer sensibility and Latinx identity. He has been living with HIV sine 1980.
His work was featured in Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. which opened at MOCA LA in 2015 and toured to venues in NY, Denver, Las Vegas , Houston, Massachusetts and Ohio with its final iteration at moCa Cleveland in 2021.
Some selected exhibits he has been in include: Drama Queer, Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver, BC -2016. Forging Territories: Afro & Latinx Queer Contemporary Art, San Diego Art Institute -2019, LA Memo: Chicana/o Art from 1972 -1989, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Los Angeles -2022 . His work is in the collections of the MoMA, The Whitney, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, MOCA, The Hammer, SFMOMA and the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (opening 2025)
