The Erotic Philosophies with Tomaso De Luca and Drew Sawyer
Géza, 306 Maujer
“But what to request? [it was] an all-American history for which I was nothing more than an intruder, or worse: a tourist. I decided to give up on making a decision, and went for a more resolute system: open a book, add the digits of the page number, pick the corresponding alphabet letter and randomly point at the screen.
Page 104: 1+0+4=5=E
The second to last entry on the list read: Everitt (Miles), Photographs”
In The Erotic Philosophies, Amant Spring 2026 Resident Tomaso De Luca reflects on his encounter with the archive of the late American photographer Miles Everitt (1912–1994) and the complex and contradictory stances that it presents: sexual drives and racial hallucinations, fetishism and intimacy, neurosis and queer imagination, regressive fantasies and desires of liberation.
Through Everitt’s photographs, his connections to the underground world of Black gay erotic magazines, and his later involvement with the activist group Black and White Men Together, De Luca reflects on a chance encounter with this archival ‘ghost’, while probing the political role of images and the philosophical dimensions of the erotic.
This project unfolds though a hybrid format combining performance, autofiction, documentary, live cinema, archival material and image-making. The presentation will be followed by a conversation with Drew Sawyer, the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
This program is part of the For Your Reference series, where our artists in residence share and discuss key references informing their ongoing research at Amant. Amant programs are always free.
Doors for The Erotic Philosophies will open at 6:45 pm on Wednesday, April 1 in Géza, located at 306 Maujer. RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Entry is first come, first served. To ensure an uninterrupted program, doors will close 20 minutes after the start time.
Drew Sawyer is a historian and a curator, who holds the title of the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has previously held curatorial positions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Columbus Museum of Art. Sawyer holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University with a particular interest in the economic and social conditions of modern and contemporary art in the United States, often drawing from the fields of sociology and anthropology. He is a regular contributor to scholarly volumes, exhibition catalogues, journals, and magazines. He has taught at Columbia University, Yale School of Art, and Image Text Ithaca MFA Program, and received a 2020 Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators.
