The book, arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified, explores the resonances between the individual and collective art practices of four artists who are original core members of  New York-based queer art collective fierce pussy. Formally distinct from their collective work, they share in their practices across multiple mediums, in photography, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture, a mutability of materials across time as an inquiry into relationships between subjectivity, perception, time, place, and history. Tactics of abstraction serve as manifestations of refuge, necessity, and resistance. The work of fierce pussy, using xerox, typewriter, and posters, makes visibility of lesbian identity in the public space a political cause. The book returns to fierce pussy’s work in the streets of New York to consider how bodies’ visibility and legibility inform the artists’ individual art practices in activating perceptual and political agencies.

Jo-ey Tang is a Hong Kong-born American curator, artist, and writer. He has served as arts editor of n+1 (2009–14), curator at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014–15), director of exhibitions at Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art & Design, Ohio (2017–20), and digital community manager at Denniston Hill, Woodridge, New York (2021). He was appointed director of KADIST San Francisco in 2021. He has curated exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2019); and FUTURA Center for Contemporary Art, Prague (2016). He is coeditor of three books, including DUST: The Plates of the Present (Spector Books and Centre Pompidou, 2020); shelf documents: art library as practice (TRACK Report, 2021); and curatorial feelings by Eloise Sweetman (Shimmer Press, 2022). He studied at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and received his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, and MFA from New York University.