Pleasure Cruise: Ále Campos & Kitty Rauth

Pleasure Cruise is a two-person exhibition presenting video installation works and sculptures by artists Ále Campos and Kitty Rauth. 

Campos takes a step back from liveness and explores performance on camera. These discreet video installations extract the double entendre embedded within the age-old question of gay cruising culture, “are you looking?”. Taking on the architectural forms and objects associated with sites of anonymous sex, these videos become queered speculative sites for contemplating tension, gaze and intimacy.

Rauth follows the histories of sunken cruise ships, namely the Titanic, to consider the complications of pleasure and indulgence. Engaging nautical traditions and symbolism, historical recreation, and fan fiction, the work builds a haunted picture of the relationship between classed hubris and catastrophic failure.

Ále Campos (b. 1994, Los Angeles, California) is a multidisciplinary artist and performance maker whose elastic studio practice is anchored in the vernacular of drag and their persona, ‘Celeste’. They generate live performance works that are often rhapsodic and mediated by technology, unfolding from and into the mediums of sculpture, sound, text, video and installation. They are currently a lecturer in Performance at SAIC and are an active, participating member of the drag and nightlife community in Chicago, currently holding the title of resident performer / co-producer of Rumors, a monthly event that showcases some of the city’s premiere performers and DJ’s. 

Kitty Rauth (b. 1992, New Jersey) is an artist and organizer based in Chicago, IL. Drawing from personal histories of growing up in systems of etiquette, their multi-disciplinary practice finds poetic spaces that consider care and interdependency, community, abundance, flamboyance, and failure. Rauth serves as a Lecturer of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the Artistic Director of Comfort Station in Logan Square.