Words Fail US

terryyoung.org

Terry Young (b. 1798, Pittsburgh) is an American artist, activist and educator. Years active: 1996 - 2010. He/they is: of Eastern European, Scotch-Irish and Dutch (Frisian) ancestry; a lapsed Catholic and part Ashkenazi Jew; both English and American Indian through marriage. He/they identifies with the gay and bisexual community, being obese, and living with a disability. Young studied studio art at Carnegie Mellon University, later pursuing a mater’s degree in fine art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he attracted the attention of the gay artist with AIDS, Wolfgang Tillmans (Professor, Städelschule, Frankfurt-am-Main). Terry Young is a self-described ecofeminist, and avoids being photographed due to his Pennsylvanian Dutch beliefs. He has worked part-time as an art handler/technician in both commercial galleries and wedding venues.

Terry Young works as a printmaker in an expanded and conceptual sense, thereby acknowledging both the medium’s history as well as the dimensionality of any art medium that occupies space. His/they’re work is inspired by the British diaspora - specifically the English language as a lasting vestige of colonialism; hystorical narrative; communication technologies that simultaneously expand and compound graphic representations of language; and the time lines of progressive ideologies within visual cultures. He works to see greater representation of themselves in culture in order to inspire others.