Beneath the City, a World
Beneath the City, a World
Curated by Jameson Paige
Featuring works by Aru Apaza, Jen Everett, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Zach Hill, Marcellus, Dalila Sanabria, Vanessa Leiva Santos, Kellen Wright, and Guanyu Xu
January 16, 2026 -
March 7, 2026
How is space mapped, built, intervened upon, and ultimately lived in and through our everyday lives? What do we take with us—and what do we leave behind?
Beneath the City, a World draws together artists who use space itself as a medium—remapping archives, quoting architecture, and tracing the residues of place to consider how queer and trans people navigate, build, and remember the world around them. Across installation, video, sculpture, and sound, the works present interior spaces such as nightclubs, living rooms, and bedrooms alongside exterior environments like streets, landscapes, and cities. These sites manifest not as literal representations but as memories, fragments, and temporary interventions—becoming aesthetic indices of queer presence and relation.
Paige’s curatorial project asks: What does a queer orientation to space look like today, and how do artists bring those orientations into focus? In 1997, architecture scholar Aaron Betsky published Queer Space, examining how queer people reoriented urban architectures toward new forms of desire and belonging. Though this foundational text has been expanded and negotiated across architectural, aesthetic, and cultural studies since its publishing, its imprint remains an impactful touchpoint for specific queerly embodied, spatial signifiers. Nearly three decades later, and in a moment when many historic queer spaces in St. Louis and beyond have closed without replacement, the artists in Beneath the City, a World propose new ways of mapping intimacy, community, and politics across built and imagined landscapes.
Beneath the City, a World is organized by Jameson Paige (Curator) with support from Kalaija Mallery (Artistic & Executive Director), Kristina Murray (Gallery Manager), Kellen Wright and Kevin Harris (Fabrication and Tech), and ashley king (Designer).
This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Teiger Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, and the Regional Arts Council of St. Louis. The exhibition is part of The Luminary’s ongoing series of programs dedicated to fostering new artistic vision and critical discourse.
About the Curator
Jameson Paige is a curator and writer based between Philadelphia and New York. His practice negotiates spatial politics at the individual and collective level, attending to the modes artists and publics generate new cultural forms. His recent work has manifested as projects in public space, programming initiatives, and exhibitions. He is currently the Curator of Public Practice at Mural Arts Philadelphia and teaches in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at the New School in New York. Recent writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, Cultured, and The Seen Journal. Recent exhibitions and projects have been presented in the Philadelphia City Hall Courtyard, at La Capilla de Arte, Puebla, MX as part of Bienal Sur, and at Fjord in Philadelphia. Paige is currently The Luminary’s 2025 Curatorial Fellow.
Guanyu Xu, Worlds within Worlds, 2019. Archival pigment print. / Jesús Hilario Reyes, Untitled (Crossings), 2022. Video still.
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