Brian Van Camerik
Brian Van Camerik
Artist Biography
Homosocial is a multimedia project created by Brian Van Camerik. At its core, Homosocial is a project celebrating queerness in the past and present. A creative endeavor that guides his artistic practice, Van Camerik works in a variety of media, from photography to paper, mat board sculptures and woodworking.
Van Camerik earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with honors in 2014. In 2014, he was recipient of the Henry Schiedt Memorial Travel Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
For Homosocial, Van Camerik has had numerous solo exhibitions, at venues such as the Kaneko Gallery at American River College, Blue Line Arts in Sacramento, and Corugat Loft in San Francisco. His work has participated in many group exhibitions, including Facades at OFFUS Gallery, Expand and Contract in the LA Center for Photography, and Pride, Not Prejudice at the Sausalito Center for the Arts.
Homosocial and Van Camerik are based in the LA area in California.
Artist Statement
My project Homosocial celebrates homosociality portrayed in vintage, vernacular photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries. I collect images of couples displaying this behavior of two same-gendered people interacting in an intimate way. While the term does not exactly mean homosexual, it’s a broader term that defines queer engagement between two people.
My purpose with Homosocial is to reframe how viewers see and interpret vintage imagery of homosociality from the past. Many people are unfamiliar with homosocial relationships. For some, these images of same-gender intimacy may seem strange or even unacceptable; I, however, choose to honor the relationships captured in these photographs. By housing the homosocial images in religious objects such as reliquaries, labyrinths, altarpieces and icons, my pieces elicit respect for the couples depicted in the vintage imagery.
I create religious and quasi-religious structures to challenge our misconceptions of queer, homosocial intimacy. Many of my works incorporate miniaturized ecclesiastical architecture; this choice conveys my desire to see the joining together of two traditionally adversarial communities: LGBTQ+ people and Christians. My reliquaries envision a future in which all people can appreciate and embrace the beauty of homosocial relationships.
I earnestly want to shift homophobic attitudes, whether or not they are justified by religion. My work brings fresh attention to a historically-repressed aspect of human behavior and reclaims homosocial intimacy as an expression of the sublime.
Get Connected
Instagram: @homosocialcollection
Email: brian@homosocial.xyz