Jon Davies is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Carleton University, Ottawa (2025–27). He received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University in 2023 with the dissertation “The Fountain: Art, Sex and Queer Pedagogy in San Francisco, 1945–95.” After living for a long time in Toronto and then the Bay Area, he is back home in Montréal.
*NOW + RECENT*
I am working on a publication for my exhibition That Directionless Light of the Future: Rediscovering Russell FitzGerald with Information Office, Vancouver. It will have image reproductions, an extended version of my curatorial essay, and shorter texts by Dodie Bellamy, Jamie Parra, and others. Coming spring/summer 2026.
I co-curated the pop-up queer video projection and storefront exhibition project Galerie des glaces / Hall of Mirrors with artist Daniel Barrow in Montréal’s gay village from February 28 – March 14, 2026. Artists: Glenn Gear, Francisco González-Rosas, Nelson Henricks, Philippe Internoscia, lamathilde, Jenny Lin + Eloisa Aquino (B&D Press), Dayna McLeod, Johnny Forever Nawracaj, Pompom Palace Presents (Bernadette Houde + Amy Fung), Aaron Pollard, Jamie Ross + Esther Splett, Jo Reid Sévigny, Santiago Tamayo Soler, and Antoine Vogler. The best photographic documentation is available on our Instagram.
I assisted editor Christopher House on the anthology Still With Us: Stories of HIV/AIDS and Dance in Canada (2026), designed by Lisa Kiss and published by Dance Collection Danse, Toronto.
I presented the four-program film series San Francisco Sexual Babylon at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montréal from February 9–14, 2026.
I gave a talk, “Learning from San Francisco: From Sexual Freedom to Free Art,” in the Art + Architectural History department of Carleton University on Friday, February 6, 2026.
I wrote a profile of Kyle Alden Martens and B. Brookbank for BlackFlash 42.3 (Winter 2026).
I presented the guest-curated screening San Francisco Sexual Babylon at the ChromaQueer Film + Arts Festival, Ottawa, on November 8, 2025.
I reviewed Jenine Marsh’s exhibition Microcosm at the Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art (January 24 – March 29, 2025) for Border Crossings 168 (September 2025).
I held the 2024–25 General Idea Fellowship at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
I introduced Charles Atlas’s 1987 film Hail the New Puritan at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, on June 1, 2025.
I presented on the panel “Public Intimacies: Rethinking Sexology and Sex Ed Media Cultures” (chair: Ankita Deb) at the 2025 Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Chicago on April 4, 2025.
I guest-curated five film/video screenings (which ran from March 20 to April 10, 2025) accompanying the large-scale exhibition a field of bloom and hum at the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. On April 5, 2025, I was in coversation with artist-filmmaker Tom Kalin and professor Jamie Parra as part of the museum’s Queer Archives Symposium (photos here). The film programs were: A Room of One’s Own, The Hatred of Capitalism, The Dancer from the Dance, Eternal Homes of the Transient Heart, and The Personal Is Political.
I curated the presentation of the exhibition Three Way Mirror: Daniel Barrow, Glenn Gear, Paige Gratland at the Stewart Hall Art Gallery in Pointe Claire, QC, April 13 – June 22, 2025 (a curatorial tour took place on June 12). The essay is available in the brochure and I also wrote the essay for their exhibition at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna.
I wrote the texts for Kévin Blinderman’s exhibition Promise I’ll Be Kind and Produzentin’s exhibition So Fragile (Proddy in the Potty) at Bonny Poon / Conditions, Toronto, February 15 – March 29, 2025.
I wrote a short text on Mike Hoolboom’s film In the Theatre for the book Mike Hoolboom: Work, edited by Clint Enns (Ottawa: Canadian Film Institute, 2025).
My cover story “The Scene of the Crime” on artist Lyle Ashton Harris was published in Camera Austria 168 (2024).
My article “‘Manhandle the Merchandise’: Michael Snow’s Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)” was published in Pop Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), edited by Glyn Davis and Tom Day.
My article “The Remains of Jerome Caja and Charles Sexton” was published in the Archives of American Art Journal 63.2 (2024).
I wrote a short text on John Greyson’s video The World Is Sick (sic) for the collection Toronto Living with AIDS, edited by Ryan Conrad (Toronto: PUBLIC Books, 2024).
My essay “Trying to See What Isn’t There” was published in Afterimage51.3 (2024).
My essay on Gregg Bordowitz’s film Fast Trip, Long Drop was reprinted in Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema, mostly, edited by Sam Ashby (London: SPBH Editions, 2024).
I wrote some of the artist biographies for C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz’s exhibition catalogue for Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art (Los Angeles: Inventory Press with Williams College Museum of Art, Vincent Price Art Museum, and Independent Curators International, 2024).
My article with August Klintberg, “Why Can’t I Be Two People?: Aleesa Cohene and Benny Nemer’s The Same Problem” was published in the Journal of Canadian Art History 43. 1–2 (2022) special issue on collaboration edited by Erin Silver and Elizabeth Anne Cavaliere.
I guest-curated the annual retrospective program for the 2024 Berlin Porn Film Festival. San Francisco Sexual Babylon consisted of six film programs that highlighted the San Francisco Bay Area as the epicenter of the sexual revolution, and a place where artists of all kinds worked to advance sexual liberation. It ran from October 22 – 27 at Kino Moviemento.
I guest-curated That Directionless Light of the Future: Rediscovering Russell FitzGerald from the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery collection at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, which ran from September 3 – December 8, 2024. The webpage above includes the exhibition brochure, the full curatorial essay, installation shots, and audio of my curatorial tour from the opening reception. There was also a panel in tandem with the show on the topic of “Difficult Kinship” at UBC on November 22, 2024.
My essay “The End of the Line” about Nelson Henricks’ work for was published in the Vidéographe online publication accompanying his win of the 2024 Robert-Forget Award.
I wrote the text for Kyle Alden Martens’ exhibition Spun Through the Heel at Patel Brown, Montreal, April 25 – June 1, 2024.
I curated a four-screening series, Vibrations for a New People, for the Moving Image department of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, May 3–4 (in person) and May 10–11, 2024, 7pm. Special guest Glenn Belverio made this blog post about it. I also wrote an essay, “Morbid Symptoms,” for the Walker’s online Reader.
My article “‘Landscapes’: Andy Warhol and Victor Hugo’s collaborations in gay sex and art” was published in Porn Studies journal in April 2024.
I participated in « Draguer » le musée et ses sources : la queerness face aux archives, the Centre Pompidou’s Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s 9th summer school (2023) and its journal came out in 2024.
EDITING
I edited an anthology of video artist Colin Campbell’s scripts and other writings (short fiction, articles, talks, excerpts of his two novels, etc.) for Concordia University Press in 2021 titled More Voice-Over: Colin Campbell Writings. It has been reviewed by Charles Reeve in RACAR, Francisco-Fernando Granados in C Magazine and Keith Garebian in Literary Review of Canada.
I also edited issues #5 and #6 (2021) of Little Joe magazine with Sam Ashby.
CURATING
I co-curated the 68th Flaherty Film Seminar “Queer World-Mending” with artist Steve Reinke, June 17–23, 2023 at Skidmore College, NY. You can find the list of artists here, the program listing here and the publication here. I later presented the curated program Unshielded in the Tang Teaching Museum’s “Whole Grain: Experiments in Film & Video” screening series on Monday, March 18, 2024.
“I Almost Ran Over Liza Minnelli Today”: Colin Campbell and Lisa Steele in L.A., 1976–77 was on view at the ONE Gallery, West Hollywood, from July 8 until September 23, 2018. Press: Artforum Critic’s Pick. It toured to VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal (February 11–June 26, 2021) and Or Gallery, Vancouver (November 19, 2022–January 28, 2023). Press from tour: Le Devoir, Vie des Arts and ReIssue.
See my Curating page for all other exhibitions and screenings.
WRITING
My paper “The Word Made Flesh: On John Bentley Mays’s ‘Miracles of Emanuel Jaques'” is in RACAR 48.1 (2023). I presented it at the UAAC Conference at the University of Toronto on October 29, 2022 on the panel Queer Episodes of Canadian Art and at the General Idea Symposium at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, on June 4, 2022.
I have an essay called “Defaced” in Chris Curreri (Kingston, ON: Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Contemporary Calgary, 2023), edited by Emelie Chhangur.