Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago is pleased to present the solo exhibition, Dove Hornbuckle: Self-Portrait as a Faerie with Large and Powerful Breasts, which materially explores the subject matter of faeries through craftwork and healing modalities. Hornbuckle’s artworks integrate queer-community practices, bodily presence, and spiritual values. The exhibition will showcase new ceramic works, monotypes, and haptic sculptures that push scale, material composites, and compositional elements in the works. A hallmark of the exhibition will be an abundant, wall-based ceramic installation that depicts a flock of faeries of varying sizes. The multitude feel connected to a great translocation that evokes a feeling of solidarity among queer people and allies, at a time when there is deep socio-political trauma and restrictive legislation against queer and trans people.

The artist's research on faerie work is largely drawn from time spent with the Radical Faeries during rural retreats and studying their history. The history of the Radical Faeries is one that begins in San Francisco in the 1970s, but its lineage in gay liberation and social change spans a century in the United States. They are a progressive, political and spiritual community of gays and queers who organize to end discrimination and promote equality, which came out of the radical politics and counterculture movements of the 1960s.

They also draw inspiration from the Mattachine Society, founded in Los Angeles during the 1950s. A secret group of gay activists rooted in Leftist politics, they aimed to develop critical awareness of social justice and LGBTQ+ rights. The Mattachine Society’s ideas were similar to and drawn from the era's Civil Rights movement. The Mattachine Society built on the gay liberation movement set forth by Chicago’s Society for Human Rights in the 1920s. The Society for Human Rights was a short-lived community that was legitimized by the State of Illinois through a charter. As one of the first gay rights organizations in the U.S., the Society promoted queer culture and emancipation through newsletters to their members.

Today's Radical Faeries gather during retreats for political kinship, emotional support, mutual aid, and sensual pleasure. While the Radical Faeries come from an extended tradition of struggle for gay rights, it is a complicated history of values, ideas, and people that skews simplification. This complicated and multi-layered space and time is where Hornbuckle’s work resides.

Beyond the artist’s personal affiliation with contemporary queer communities, their work also sources a lyrical lineage from the poetry of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Ocean Vuong. Theirs is a literary tradition of long-lined poems that use raw and honest language inspired by the inner humanity of ordinary beings and their lives. In their poetry is a despair for society’s abuses but also a belief in the redemptive love that humanity has the capacity to conjure. The poetic approach appears in Hornbuckle’s material manipulations to express the complexity of the flock of faeries. The constellation of faeries is a complex web of contradictions and conflicts that coexist in the identity of the queer self and community. Identity formation of the self and collective is multi-layered and shifting, as are faeries in flux in their organizing and change-making.

More than the historical and lyrical, touch is another language present in Hornbuckle’s works. The act of touch is a way of understanding the world and one another through physiological and embodied experiences. The tactility of Hornbuckle’s works reflects a somatic curiosity within the viewer and emphasizes how they perceive their own bodies. The directness of touch is visible in the clay, ceramic-based processes, and printing techniques that the artist utilizes in their works throughout the exhibition.

Dove Hornbuckle: Self-Portrait as a Faerie with Large and Powerful Breasts is part of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago's 2025 Open Call, an exhibition program that aims to present new and exceptional work by a visual artist who lives and works in the Chicago area.