TEARJERKER: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN | EXHIBITION OPENING AND FILM SCREENING

Ucross Foundation, the acclaimed artist residency program in northern Wyoming, invites the community to the exhibition opening for Tearjerker: Brokeback Mountain by Ucross Fellow Natalie Woodlock of Seattle, Washington, on Thursday, October 2.
 
Originally from Australia, Woodlock is a printmaker who explores queer temporality, subculture, and representation within popular culture in her work. In this exhibition, she explores the impact a piece of media can have on one’s emotions. Tearjerker films are designed to evoke sadness and create ritual spaces for catharsis and release. This can transform spaces, such as cinemas, into a site of communal exchange between audience members.
 
For Tearjerker: Brokeback Mountain Woodlock showed a series of screenings of Ang Lee's 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, adapted from the 1997 short story by Ucross Fellow — and Pulitzer Prize winner — Annie Proulx. During the film, audience members were given handkerchiefs for their tears and asked to write down the scenes that made them cry. This exhibition merges screen-printed illustrations of these scenes and the handkerchiefs embroidered with the names of those brought to tears by this film that tells stories about love, repression, money, and mortality.
 
“Immediately upon its release, Ang Lee's film became a cultural touchstone — for the first time, a story of queer love in a pre-Stonewall era unfolded to a mass audience,” said Woodlock. “My hope is that the circle of sympathy present at each screening of this tearjerker is enshrined in the prints and handkerchiefs embroidered with the name of each viewer who was brought to tears.”

This event will take place on Thursday, October 2, starting at 5 p.m. in the Raymond Plank Center in Ucross, Wyoming, and includes the opening of Woodlock’s exhibition, an artist talk, and a screening of Brokeback Mountain, accompanied by the Ucross chef’s artisanal popcorn. This is a free event that is open to the public with required registration at ucross.org.
 
Since Ucross’s first residencies were awarded in 1983, more than 3,000 artists have received the gift of time and space. Distinguished Fellows include Annie Proulx, Terry Tempest Williams, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Patchett, Bill Morrison, Theaster Gates, Anthony Hernandez, and Tayari Jones. National Book Award winners Susan Choi, Sigrid Nunez, and Sarah M. Broom have been residents, as have Academy Award and Tony winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Emmy Award winner Billy Porter, Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, and former three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.
 
Get free tickets to Tearjerker: Brokeback Mountain here.