Joey Terrill was born in 1955 and is a second-generation native of East Los Angeles, a region central to Chicano life, art and culture in the United States. He attended Cathedral High School where he became involved with La Huelga and helped with the Caesar Chavez-led grape and lettuce boycott. During this time, he became aware of Sister Corita Kent, a longstanding faculty member of the Immaculate Heart College art department, who championed progressive, socially conscious artworks made with a pop sensibility. This stance corresponded with Terrill’s ambitions, and he enrolled there in 1973. As a student, he immersed himself in the burgeoning Chicano civil rights movement while exploring “hidden” networks of queer creatives (Gronk, Cyclona, Mundo Meza and, a frequent collaborator, Teddy Sandoval among others). Buoyed by a newfound sense of community, Terrill began a practice based on his life experiences, and by the mid to late 1970s, he was confronting homophobia and racial stereotyping in his artwork.
Joey Terrill attended Immaculate Heart College and California State University, Los Angeles. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Ortuzar Projects, New York; Park View / Paul Soto, Los Angeles; ONE Gallery, West Hollywood; Norris Fine Art Gallery, Los Angeles; Score Bar, Los Angeles; and Windows on White Street, New York. His work has been featured in the institutional surveys ESTAMOS BIEN–La Trienal 20/21, El Museo Del Barrio, New York (2020–2021); Touching History: Stonewall 50, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs (2019–2020); Through Positive Eyes, Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (2019); Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., a partnership between Museum of Contemporary Art and the Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time:LA/LA at the Pacific Design Center and ONE Gallery, Los Angeles; and Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011). His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts; and Art Institute of Chicago. His painting, Painted by Her Brother, 1983 is one of the lead promotional images for Made in LA: Acts of Living at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum.
