New Exhibition | Tosh Basco: No Sky

When I dance, I am free of it all, an open channel to say what can’t be said in the photos or in words. It is all a movement towards love and the dissolution of the Self as a discrete being. It is an offering in the hope that this can soften the hard edge that propels us further away from one another.

——Tosh Basco

Tosh Basco: No Sky

Venue：Rockbund Art Museum, Floor 4 - 5，20 Huqiu Rd, Shanghai

Date：July 1 - October 15, 2023

No Sky is the first survey exhibition of Tosh Basco. A Filipino - American artist based in Zurich, Basco is highly regarded for her hypnotic performances, movement-based works, and improvisations, which unfold across film, theater, drawing, and painting. No Sky presents hitherto unseen works that Basco made over the last decade. All the works in the exhibition, in various ways, can be considered as representation-by-touch and thus ask the viewer to think about alternative sensory modes of representation, challenging the dominance of the eye and mind, imitation and idea.

Basco became well-known as boychild, an ethereal drag persona that the artist performed over hundreds of times over a few short years. After her early success with boychild, Basco’s practice continued to evolve as she explored experimental performance aesthetics and dance practices, such as Butoh, which center around extremely intricate movements. The difficulty of documenting delicate, entangled gestures using photography and video led Basco to experiment with drawing and painting as alternative forms of translation.

The exhibition transforms the RAM’s fourth-floor gallery into a blue stage, which alludes to Basco’s studio space. In this theater, three series of works on paper are presented on transparent structures, which are reminiscent of the iconic glass easels designed by the late Italian-Brazilian architect, Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992). Bo Bardi's design offered a breakthrough in the 1950s, enabling artworks to exist freely within an open space, accessible from numerous perspectives, unburdened by any predefined narrative or hierarchy. Similarly, in No Sky, Basco’s drawings levitate in the center stage. On the museum’s fifth floor is an installation of photographic works responding to the exhibition’s title: No Sky. It takes its name from a poem by the Lebanese American poet and artist Etel Adnan (1925-2021), which addresses themes of dislocation and the impossibility of returning to a past or home.

Under No Sky, the studio is the stage; performance is rehearsal; painting is touching; improvisation is a form of emancipation.

Tosh Basco, untitled (no sky), 2023, C-Print, 30.4 x 23.9 cm, Courtesy of the artist.

Tosh Basco, Photographer: Diana Pfammatter

Tosh Basco was born in California and rose to prominence in the drag scene in San Francisco in the 2010s. Well known for her movement-based performances under the name boychild, Basco’s photography and drawing accompany the performance practice. Viewed as a whole, Basco’s work attempts to enfold language, becoming, and representation together in spaces where they are presumed to exist as discrete entities. She is co-founder of the collaborative entity Moved by the Motion with Wu Tsang, and collaboration remains a vital aspect of her work. Basco’s work has been presented at the Venice Biennale; the Sydney Biennial; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MOCA, Los Angeles; and ICA London, among other institutions.

NO SKY, Serpentine Park Nights, London, 2021