GenderFail Mission
GenderFail is a publishing, programing and archiving platform run solely by Be Oakley. GenderFail is not non-for-profit but profit-for-survival or profit-to-continue-our-work-without-other-means-of-capital and most importantly to make money for others I publish, to create profit-for-labor. With GenderFail, publishing is personal, it’s a means of my livelihood and a tool for the dissemination of imperfect, but powerful idea. For GenderFail, we seek to publish works that expand queer subjectivity by looking at queerness as an identity that challenges capitalist, racist, ableist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-environmental ideologies.
With GenderFail, the project has published work by 30 artists including Jesse Harrod, Coyote Park, Sable Elyse Smith, Anthony Icacono, Liz Barr, Lex Brown, Alok Vaid-Menon, American Artist, Demian Dineyazhi and many others. GenderFail has been apart of exhibitions, programs and events The Studio Museum in Harlem (Radical Reading Room, 2019), Williams College Museum of Art (Queer Zines, 2019), MoMA PS1 (Past and Future Fictions, 2018), The International Center of Photography (Queering the Collection, 2018), Excess and Refusal (Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, 2021), Imperfect Archiving, Archiving as Practice (Center for Book Arts, 2021) and many others. Our work has been featured in Italian Vogue (January 2020), The Baffler (No.56 The Counterpublic Option, March 2021), Eye on Design (Three Publishers Get Real About Independent Publishing), and many others.
GenderFail publications can be found in the library collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Brooklyn Museum Library and over 50 others. GenderFail publications can be found at over 70 bookstores in North America and the European Union including Printed Matter (Chelsea NYC), Bluestockings (LES NYC), Quimby's Bookstore (Chicago), Ulises Books (Philadelphia), Good Press (Glasgow), Likely General (Toronto), Casa Bosques (CDMX), The ICA Store (Richmond), and many others.
GenderFail is currently working out of the Ridgewood Neighborhood of Queens, NYC.
Transparency:
I believes in total Transparency on how we fund our project. I am proudly middle class with solid midwestern roots with parents who were both underpaid and underappreciated social workers. 90% of his project is funded through direct sales of our publications. As artists and publisher, we must share information to fight the hyper-capitalist forces that look to take advantage of the many for the privilege of just a few.
2019 Yearly Income
2020 Yearly Income
2021 Yearly income
2022 Yearly income
Contact us
genderfailproject@gmail.com
Instagram @genderfail
GenderFail in Online, Print and other Media!!!
Online:
Hyperallergic, May 30, 2023. Lakshmi Rivera, Five Incanting Art Bookstores in NYC
Toronto Life, October 3, 2022,Caroline Aksich and Sarah Kidd, Inside Art Metropole’s new College Street space
It’s Nice That, July 11, 2022, Olivia Hingley, “Design can be a powerful tool for the creation of radical content”: Genderfail builds typefaces from hand-drawn protest posters
It’s Nice That, June 15, 2022, Olivia Hingley, Explore queer design history through Days of Rage, a new Online Exhibition Documenting LGBTQIA+ activist posters
Fifth State #410 Fall 2021, Rich Dana (Ricardo Feral), In the World of Digital, Print Raises A Challenge
Eye on Design, November 4th, 2021, Somnath Bhatt Three Publishers Get Real About Independent Publishing: What does it take to make indie publishing work?
Echo Gone Wrong, August 2021, Photo reportage from the exhibition "Excess and Refusal' ay EKKM
Missy Magaine, Decloonising design: https://missy-magazine.de/blog/2021/05/10/sichtbar-machen/
Le Monde, June 2021,Par Isabelle Mayault: Typographes, graphistes, artistes… Ces « hacktivistes » qui inventent une langue sans féminin ni masculin
LAMPOON, January 2021, Elena Caslini: Ulises, Philadelphia. Ideas for a democratization of curatorial practice
Brooklyn Rail, March 2020, Megan N. Liberty: Printed Matter
Hyperallergic, January, 2020, Hakim Bishara: Brooklyn’s A.I.R Gallery to Launch Its First Feminist and Queer Art Book Fair
OutTV, December 2019, Josh Signler : OUTTV's 19 BEST READS OF 2019
Recess Art, November 2019. Tavia Nyong'o: JUST OUT OF HAND, JUST OUT OF REACH
Igloo, October 2019: Lay Me Down Across the Lines - a new exhibition at Kunsthalle Bega
C& Contemporary And, November 2019, Mia Harrison: lay me down across the lines Invisible Connections of Feminism
Sixty Inches From Center, November 2019, Tamara Becerra Valdez: Inga: Spacemaking Through and Around Books
Printed Matter, September 2019, Loraine Furter: Copy This Table
Art In America, August 2019, Kerry Doran: Identity Binge: How Lex Brown Makes Television
The Cornell Daily Sun, March 2019, Isabel Ling: LING | The Dangers of Binaries
Popdust, June 2019 Sara Nuta: Countering the Whitewashing of Pride: NYC Honors Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera
Williamsrecord, February 2019, Wilson Lam: “Queer Zines” workshop celebrates queer creativity, love in all forms
Eye on Design, January 2019, Shea Fitzpatrick: The Queer Zine Library in Hong Kong That’s Finding a Global Community
Eye on Design, January 2019, Meg Miller: What Does “Queering Design Education” Actually Look Like in Practice?
Hyperallergic, September 2018, Deena ElGenaidi: A Preview of Printed Matter’s Annual NY Art Book Fair, Featuring 73 First-Time Exhibitors
The Commonwealth Times, January 2018, Georgia Geen : Panel displays perspectives on Richmond publishing projects
Sixty Inches From Center, November 2017, Annette LePique: El Sol Sale Para Todxs: A Conversation with Galia Basail
The Daily Beast, September 2017, Lyne Lucien: Gorgeous LGBTQ Photography at the NY Art Book Fair
Media Milwaukee, March 2016, Mike Holloway: The World of Zines
Wikipedia: GenderFail
Podcast:
Papercut Podcast, May 2018, Christopher Kardambikis: GenderFail at Washington Center for the Arts
Bad at Sports, Janurary 2019, Episode 670: Chicago Artist Book Fair
In Print:
The Baffler No.56 The Counterpublic Option, March 2021, Say Their Name
C Magazine: Issue 147, October 2020, Cason Sharpe: Consciousness: Lex Brown
Conde Nest Traveler, April 2020, CNT Editors: New York, Our Favorite New Yorkers on the Best Things in All Five Boroughs
Vogue Italia January 2020, Pg. 54, Laura Taccari: Failure E Un Po' Rinascere
Eye on Design: Issue 3, Pg.62-63, Nathan Ma: History Made in The
Online Publications:
Queer Arcive Work 1
Urgency Reader 2
What is Queer Typography?
Online Exhibitions:
Imperfect Archiving, Archiving as Practice Center for Book Arts
Title TBD, Cleveland Institute of Art Reinberger Gallery
Publishing as Practice, Reston Art Center
An Alarming Specificity, Haverford College Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery
Radical Reading Room Studio Museum of Harlem
Public Programs
Failure as a tool: GenderFail’s An Anthology on Failure 2: Building on our Failed States CUE Art Foundation
Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair 2021
