Carl Voss: Pure Hunger

“Pure Hunger,” a reference to the poem “The New Religion” by Chris Abani, comes from the lived experience within Queer nightlife—where the fetish party and bodies against body emerge from the personal archive like ghosts, just barely refusing to keep quiet. Often, what is unseen becomes as much the subject as what is legible. 

Carl Voss is an artist investigating economies of intimacies through Queer nightlife, fetish subcultures and community interaction. Their work is invested in the slow reveal of location and memory—what is revealed by denial, how safety and community are carved into and out of the archive, and what threads of connectivity occur across people, time and location. Their work employs the sensations of restraint and the disruptive force of personal memory to rehearse the possibilities of connection. Their work has been shown recently at Ohklahomo in Chicago, Illinois; the Mid America Print Council (MAPC) Conference at Kansas State University; and Other Places Art Fair, San Pedro, California.  

Carl Voss is an M.F.A. candidate at Syracuse University, co-founder of Citrus Gallery in New York and a Turner Semester resident for Fall 2025. The Turner Semester residency program is part of VPA Los Angeles and generously supported by Marylyn Turner ’56 G’57 and Chuck Klaus G’05.