Barbershop: The Art of Queer Failure
June 06 - July 19, 2025
Performances: June 6, 5:00-7:00 PM, June 20, 5:00-7:00 PM, June 21, 1:00-3:00 PM, July 11, 5:00-7:00 PM
Artist Talk: July 12, 1:00-3:00 PM
Ace Lehner’s Barbershop: The Art of Queer Failure is an installation and social practice performance that takes the motif of the barbershop and queers it, creating a space for queer world-making. The installation turns traditional barbershop decor on its head. Glitter curtains and colorful patterned textiles greet the visitor. Hand-drawn posters feature images of queer icons instead of the usual photographs of different hairstyles. The waiting area seating is strategically placed to better facilitate conversations between the artist and visitors.
Lehner’s exhibition and performance embraces the ethos of queer failure (a concept developed by queer theorist Jack Halberstam in a book by the same name) as a productive way of proposing alternatives, rather than adhering to traditions of barbershops which, under the guise of giving haircuts, often reinforce notions about heteropatriarchal masculinity.
During Lehner’s public performances, visitors can get their hair cut in the style of a range of queer icons, such as Peaches, RuPaul, Andy Warhol, Alok, and Claude Cahun. In place of payment, participants agree to engage in an act of “queer world making” before their haircut grows out. The act is negotiated in conversation with the artist, and once it’s been agreed on and the haircut completed, Lehner photographs each participant and writes their act underneath their portrait. Lehner, who is not a trained barber, has been cutting hair outside of sanctioned barber channels for more than fifteen years, hence part of the ethos of queer failure. Portraits of previous participants in the project adorn the walls of the gallery, along with the acts of queer world-making they’ve engaged in as part of the exchange.
Failure has been part of queerness since the term’s reclamation in the 1980s. Queerness as identity and method fails to perform in ways that mainstream culture encourages. Queers fail to perform normatively when it comes to romantic partners, sexualities, gender identities, family structures, aesthetics, and much more. Queer and queerness fail on purpose to be normative and instead throw norms, essentialism, and givens into question. Queers and queerness fail on purpose as a means of creating other possibilities.
Barbershop: The Art of Queer Failure embraces the ethos of queer failure as a productive way of proposing alternatives rather than adhering to traditions. The work fails to reinforce masculinity and instead gives a barbershop-style haircut to anyone of any gender who is willing to engage in an act of queer world-making.
Ace Lehner was born in Upstate New York and currently lives in Burlington, VT. Their work has been exhibited at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, NY; the International Center of Photography, New York, NY; Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; The Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT; Practice Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; SOMArts, San Francisco, CA; The National Queer Arts Festival, San Francisco CA; The GLBT Historical Society Museum, San Francisco, CA; Spring Break Art Fair, New York, NY; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic NY; SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA; and La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse, Montreal Quebec, CA; among other venues. Lehner’s writing on art and visual culture has appeared in Art Journal, Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus, REFRACT, Journal, Cultural Politics, Visual Studies and more.
This project is made possible through the CNY Arts Grants for Regional Arts and Cultural Engagement regrant program thanks to a New York State Senate Initiative supported by the NYS Legislature, the Office of the Governor and administered by the New York State Council on the Arts.