Queering the Gallery: In search of counter-normative curatorial strategies (original) (raw)
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Queer(y)ing the Exhibition: A Critical Analysis
According to Michael Birchall (2014), the role of visual activist artists has become integral to contemporary curatorial strategies because curators are increasingly using exhibitions, and the practice of curating, as mechanisms and platforms for knowledge diffusion. Brenson (1998:16-17) concurs that the role of the curator, within the contemporary art world, has undergone transformation; moving from a “behind-the-scenes aesthetic arbiter to [a] central player in the broader stage of global cultural politics”. As such, the new curator recognises the capacity of art to communicate, to facilitate, to mobilise, and to encourage conversations surrounding issues that inform the contemporary milieu. Curators, like visual activist artists, can similarly give voice to social issues by focusing their exhibitions, their use of space and the selection of artworks and art objects to rethink “[ideologies], methodologies and iconographies both for what they do say, and for what do not say” (Reilly, 2011:22). Co-curators Dr Laura De Becker and Leigh Blackenberg, partnering with Haley McEwen from the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, staged an exhibition, titled "queer and trans Art-iculations: Collaborative Art for Social Change" (2014), featuring artworks by South African social and art activists, Zanele Muholi and Gabrielle Le Roux. The exhibition, as an intervention sought to address the ongoing violence and hate crimes faced by black members of the South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community. Showcasing artworks from Muholi’s ongoing "Mo(u)rning" project, which aims to memorialise the lives of deceased queer womxn of colour, and Le Roux’s "Proudly African & Transgender" (2008-2010) and "Proudly Trans in Turkey" (2010-present) series, two bodies of work “combin[ing] art and activism to… promote social justice” for transgender persons globally. The exhibition highlighted “the importance of art activism as a means to [address] the need for locally situated knowledge and action around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity” (Haysom, 2014:1; Le Roux, 2013:54). Quoted in Blackenberg and McEwen (2014:62), the curators stated that the discursive or theoretical framework, which informed queer and trans Art-iculations’ (2014) curatorial strategy, was based on Steyn’s (2010:50-81) theory of conscientisation. Conceptualised as a method for mobilising critical consciousness, the theory is concerned with a person’s acknowledgement and questioning of how power – in relation to privilege and oppression – operates within social and political discourses, whilst recognising the implications of emotional and affective responses on such discourses; “conscientisation… is both cognitive and affective, and, above all, relational [in its process” (Steyn, 2010:74). Following this framework, the exhibition established a space for viewers to learn and critically engage with issues of discrimination faced by South African queer communities through representations of lived experience. Additionally, the Wits Art Museum (WAM) gallery became a safe environment in which sexuality, sexual diversity and gender could be expressed, discussed and celebrated (McEwen & Milani, 2014:4-5). While the exhibition served as a ‘creative rupture’ to address the injustice and intolerance faced by queer people in South Africa, it could be said that the exhibition addressed the decolonisation of gender within South African discourse. The artistic representations exhibited critique, interrogate and re-negotiate ‘traditional’ heteronormative understandings of gender binaries and sexual identities (Haysom, 2014:2; McEwen & Milani, 2014:5; Wits Art Museum, n.d.). The intention of this essay is to critically examine and unpack how queer and trans Art-iculations (2014) established a framework for the decolonisation of gender and sexuality. Initially, the essay briefly contextualises an approach towards the decolonisation of gender and sexuality. Secondly, the text explores how the inclusion of specific bodies of work, by Muholi and Le Roux, “can be seen as the beginning of a decolonising [gender and sexuality] project that emerges from Africa” (Milani, 2014:75). Finally, it investigates how the engagement and use of a Comments Wall, by the exhibition’s visitors to express their responses, promoted discussions and dialogues surrounding the social and political complexities of gender and sexual diversities.
Queering Australian Museums: Management, Collections, Exhibitions, and Connections
2018
Queering Australian Museums addresses the problem of how queer or LGBTIQ communities can be further included in Australian museums on their own terms. It looks at four areas of museums—management, collections, exhibitions, and connections with audiences and communities—to consider barriers and enablers of queer inclusion in these often heteronormative institutions. Case studies of queer-inclusive efforts in public Australian museums are interpreted from institutional and community perspectives drawn from 25 interviews. The interviews are put into critical conversation with archival material and literature from museum studies and the emerging field of queer museology. The study evaluates the visibility of the history, cultures, and identities of queer communities in Australian museums. It establishes that many public representations of queerness have been driven by the efforts of LGBTIQ communities, particularly through community-based heritage organisations. It also gathers and reflects upon examples of critical queer inclusion that have occurred in public museums. Using these exemplars, it argues that queer communities should be empowered to make decisions about their own heritage with the support of museums and their unique attributes; that individual and organisational leadership, involving queer individuals and allies, should be brought to bear on this task; and that effectively navigating the tensions between museums and queer communities requires mutual understanding and accommodation. Through the process of queering the museum, it is suggested, each party might be transformed, leading to LGBTIQ diversity being valued as an integral part of society. The thesis addresses the gap in Australian museum studies literature on queer or LGBTIQ inclusion compared with Euro-American settings. It further contributes original case studies to the international field of queer museology, and to museum studies literature on including and empowering diverse communities. Both recognising the agency of queer communities and also engaging with the language and conventions of museums, it constructs a distinct account of how to navigate the historical tensions between the two. It thereby aims to enrich museum offerings for all audiences on the terms of those erstwhile excluded.
The Art of Feminist-Queering the Museum: Gate-leaking
Museum International, 2020
This paper takes part in the ongoing debate around how museums have begun to address LGBTQI+ and feminist issues in the 21st century. While Portugal is a particularly interesting country to consider, given that it has passed some of the most advanced legislation on LGBTQI+ rights in Europe (Santos 2012), this progressivism is not reflected in Portuguese museum practices, given that gender museology has been slow to emerge (Vaquinhas 2014). After briefly contextualising initiatives addressing gender in Portuguese art museums, we present as a case study Trazer a margem para o centro (Bringing the Margin to the Centre), a series of three talks hosted by the Berardo Collection Museum, which is considered Portugal’s primary modern and contemporary art museum. Unlike previous initiatives in art museums, which were museum-led, the series of talks was led by the small intersectional feminist collective FACA. A sociologist (Rita Grácio) and the three members of FACA (Andreia Coutinho, Laura ...
Ikonotheka, 2022
Ethnographic collections and museums displaying them are currently facing a crisis of representation which is deeply political. Negotiations mainly take place on a national and institutional level. Yet, in order to deal with conflicts and problems that arise around ethnographic collections in a way that allows for and affirms new relationships being formed outside the realm of representational power, new perspectives and methodological tools from a grassroots level are needed. Intersectional approaches and a renewed attention to relations around ethnographic objects, especially a rethinking of the categories “artwork” versus “ethnographica”, offer a promising route for engaging with heritage as a common ground. As such, they may enable relational politics outside the centres of power. A “queering” of anthropologist Alfred Gell’s art nexus model can be instrumental for the study of queer (non-normative) relations around artworks, including so-called ethnographic objects. The paper proposes an understanding of queerness as a method in the art and museum context, informed by the anthropology of art and kinship, queer studies, and museum studies. This methodology-in-the-making should be part of a toolkit with which researchers and arts practitioners will be able to understand and actively co-create queer relations around objects in ethnographic collections and beyond.
Museums, sexuality, and gender activism
Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, 2021
for Arts in Society and his research explores contemporary LGBT+ curatorial and artistic interventions into the Dutch, German and English museums. Conversing with intersectional feminist and queer theory, this project asks in what ways these curatorial, artistic, and collective initiatives question the intersecting exclusions and inequalities within heritage institutions.
IRIDESCENT FUTURES: Imagining Alternatives with Queering the Museum
2021
As I’m preparing for a day of museum meetings, I wonder if my young femme-domme-gender-queer-of-color aesthetics leaking through my fishnets, tattoos, and leather choker reveal “too much” about the queer I am whether or not I’m appropriate or belong in this space. This began when I moved up in positions. I was hired initially as a contract laborer in the education department in an off-site after-school art program, moved into temporary curatorial and installation, then temporary collections management, back to temporary curatorial and installation, and finally landed a full-time, then thought, permanent position in education as the teacher and student program coordinator at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Unapologetically queer throughout all those cycles of uncertain employment within the same institution driven on the concept of “la familia” (or the family), I remained hopeful that I could contribute to queering this institution. I insisted, but quickly realized tha...