GenderFail Mission
Contact us
genderfailproject@gmail.com
Instagram @genderfail
GenderFail (founded in 2015) is Be Oakley's publishing, programming, and archiving platform. GenderFail is not non-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 tool for disseminating imperfect but powerful ideas.
With GenderFail, the project has published work by numerous artists, including E. Jane, Lex Brown, Alok Vaid-Menon, American Artist, Demian Dineyazhi, Paul Paul Soulellis A.L. Stiener, Eileen Myles, Pamela Sneed, and many others. GenderFail has exhibited at MoMA PS1 (Past and Future Fictions, 2018), The International Center of Photography (Queering the Collection, 2018), Center for Book Arts (Imperfect Archiving, Archiving as Practice 2021), Woman Studio Workshop (Seize Control of the FDA 2022), Sprengel Museum Hannover (The Shelf- Artistic Publishing Platform), Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (An Incessant Unknowability: An Archive of Protest Inspired Typography and It’s Open Source Uses 2024-25).GenderFail is the reception of a 2022-2025 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Grant.
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, the 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 believe in total transparency in how we fund our projects. I am proudly middle-class with solid midwestern roots and parents who were both underpaid and underappreciated social workers. 90% of his project is funded through direct sales of our publications. As artists and publishers, 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.
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GenderFail in Online, Print, and Other Media!!!
Online:
Hyperallergic. June 12, 2024. Maya Pontone. Find Your Dream Zine at This Sprawling Manhattan Fair
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 creating radical content”: Genderfail builds typefaces from hand-drawn protest posters.
The Met. July 13, 2022. Melissa Raymond. Celebrating International Zine Month at Watson Library
It’s Nice That on June 15, 2022, Olivia Hingley, Explores 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
Williams record, 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” 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
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
Publications:
Queer Archive Work 1
Urgency Reader 2
What is Queer Typography?
Scientia Sexualis
LA TYPOGRAPHIE POST-BINAIRE
Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward
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
Conversations in Contemporary Art: GenderFail with Be Oakley
