Queer(y)ing the Exhibition: A Critical Analysis (original) (raw)

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.