Philadelphia artist Amy Cousins and Kansas City printmaker and educator Ruben Castillo talk to the Library's Anne Kniggendorf about their work and their collaboration on the Kansas City Public Library exhibition All Modes Are Open to Us.

Longtime colleagues, the two have followed the development of each other’s work, which tends to draw from archives. They discuss the relationship between decoration and genuine beauty, an appreciation of the queer population as survivalists who find joy and even humor in the struggle, and what it means to obsessively care for and catalogue a particular existence.

Their exhibition is on display in the Central Library’s Guldner Gallery through August 12, 2023.