Blouin Modern Painters covers Voice = Survival exhibition at The 8th Floor

[image description: newspaper clipping of article below with an image of stickers with activist and educational logos and text including Silence = Death by LJ Roberts]

A Queer Eye On History

By Ashley Petras

Within the past couple of decades, queer identity has become increasingly visible in America thanks to a surge of annual Pride events across the nation, the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage, and high-profile celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox who have been vocal about their trans identities. Yet in light of recent violence, like last year’s horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, it’s clear that conflicts persist for LGBTQ community. And there’s a sense that things may get worse before they get better under the Trump administration. This June, two New York exhibitions put the ongoing quest for equal protection under law for the queer community front and center.

“Queerness as Archeology,” opening June 9 at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, features 29 artists, including photo-conceptual artist Ken Gonzales-Day, who has created a photomural based on his well-known Erased Lynchingseries, and Eve Fowler, whose brightly colored commercial posters are emblazoned with the words of Gertrude Stein. “With the reinvigoration of homophobia in America, as exemplified by Vice President Mike Pence’s political record, queer abstraction might be an ideal strategic foothold for the further expansion of queer cultural and political turf,” says curator Avram Finkelstein. “It begins with the body as seen through the eyes of the artists who are dismantling ideas about identity.”

Finkelstein was actively involved in the Silence=Death movement by Act Up of the 1980s, which developed in response to the era’s AIDS crisis, and he helped create the campaign’s iconic poster. It’s this movement that inspired “Voice=Survival,” opening June 15 at The 8thFloor, the exhibition and programming space for The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. The show featured works by Shan Kelley and David Wojnarovicz, among others, and focuses on how artists and activists raised awareness of social health issues affecting the LGBTQ community in the ‘80s and ‘90s.  

According to Sara Reisman, director of The 8thFloor, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have made it easier to speak out on critical policy problems, but “Voice=Survival” explores how activism flourished before social media. “Given the political landscape that we are in now, I think it’s important to reflect on the efficacy of activist methods that were used during the AIDS epidemic,” she says, “What tactics we can re-deploy, especially when there’s so much anxiety about a loss of services given proposed amendments to the Affordable Care Act.” As Finkelstein notes, “Queer safety is a fantasy. Public acts of queer resistance, however are not.”