John Brooks announces a solo exhibition of drawings, Islands Are Not Forever, opening at The Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati on Friday, January 30, 2026.
This series of over thirty large-scale drawings is an ongoing project, began in 2023 and continues to this day. Installed as an immersive environment, Brook's figurative tableaux hold a mirror to the bewildering complexities of collective and personal queer histories. Brooks’s drawings create a panoramic landscape inhabited by historical and pop culture icons, film stars, artists, and friends, adorned with personal and cultural motifs, locales, and artistic innuendos.
Collectively the drawings address the notion of “Queer Time”—an idea among some aestheticians and philosophers that suggests that any deviation from historical or individual linearity is somehow queer.
John Brooks: Islands are Not Forever
On View: January 30 - March 15, 2026
The Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
Cincinnati, OH
Event:
Artist Talk: John Brooks in Conversation with writer Ocean Vuong
January 29, 2026, 6:00pm
