Resident Writer Michaela Hall
THE QUEER NORM…
The definition of queer in the English dictionary is ‘denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms.’ Now in 2021, Queer and LGBTQ+ rights are celebrated more than ever and people aren’t only proud and loud to belong to the community, this is now a ‘norm’ which centuries ago may have seemed unattainable with the undeniable heavy prejudice and abuse that was faced for those identifying in this way. This success is down to every individual fighting for their rights for the next generation and as a result of powerful artists determined to represent queer issues in their art for the mainstream, refusing to let discussions go silent.
American Photographer, Catherine Sue Opie is one of these powerful driving forces in the representation of the queer community. Opie is renowned in the field of photography for her vibrant portraits that capture individuals from minority communities, the largest focus being that from the queer or LGBTQ+ community. In ‘Self Portrait/Cutting’ (1993) Opie uses her own identity as a lesbian to play on ideas of the traditional and norm and what people class as the norm. In the portrait, Opie faces her back to us and she is illuminated in her presence with her skin glowing and standing out with huge contrast against a dark green background with limited detail. Our eye is drawn to the uncomfortable and confrontational carving into Opie’s skin on her back. This carving depicts a drawing that you may usually see from a child of a stickman couple in front of a house, but instead of the usual heterosexual couple that may be expected, Opie has depicted two female lovers. Despite the aggressive and painful associations we see in the photograph with the act of carving into the skin, this photograph is a huge celebration of queer love, and by placing this representation of two female lovers into a scene we would usually associate with a heterosexual couple, Opie is sticking a big middle finger up to those who say otherwise, that this isn’t the norm. With the same approach Opie dedicated a large amount of her career to photographing those who may not be seen to fit with the ‘norm’, the LGBTQ+ most famously. ‘Richard & Skeeter’ (1994) depicts a gay male couple embracing in an intimate moment. Aside from being beautiful in the expression of queer love, what Opie’s portrait of the two subjects does here is to elevate the figures to great importance as in traditional portraiture, with a plain background and a complete focus on the sitters. This play on the tradition of art history and a spotlight on those who at the time may not have been considered as the norm and tradition is incredibly powerful as it represents Opie’s refusal to depict this couple in any way that is different than the norm, empowering the associations of LGBTQ+.
Self Portrait/Cutting (1993)
Richard & Skeeter (1994)
Another artwork key to this celebration of LGBTQ+ and queer rights is American painter and sculptor, George Segal’s ‘Gay Liberation’ (1980). This artwork was made in response to the Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York. In these riots, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar that was famous for its LGBTQ+ customers. They began demanding to see the identification documents of those at the Inn and many of the LGBTQ+ community were hesitant to display their personal gender history to the officers, and they expressed this physically and verbally. Crowds started to gather at the scene and protest this forced disclosure of identity and over the next week, crowds continued to gather in support and solidarity of those from the LGBTQ+ community who were targeted at the event. This was a very important moment that marked support for the community. ‘Gay Liberation’ was commissioned by a public art fund to “be loving and caring and show the affection that is the hallmark of gay people. . . . And it had to have equal representation of men and women” and is, therefore, a clear celebration of Queer and LGBTQ+ life. The sculptures portray two gay couples, one standing with one of the partners affectionately touching the other arm, and the other couple sitting on a bench with their hands affectionately touching one another’s, on one of the pair’s thighs. This depiction is powerful in that its sculptural presence is unavoidable, confrontational yet comforting, and full of joy. This is a clear sign from Segal that the rights of the community are here to stay, just like those sculptures that are unmoveable.
Gay Liberation (1980)
What both artists manage to do with expertise is maintain the perfect balance of being confrontational and refusing to go unheard around Queer and LGBTQ+ issues whilst also creating works that provoke the viewer to consider their humanity towards others, celebrating the community. The effect of this is the normalization of queer, which otherwise may not be considered the norm to many. It is these empowering moments that are provided by such works that all contribute to the queer norm that we do now have today, in all its glory.
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Title
Between the Sheets
Abstract
As a painter, I express feelings of alienation and in-between-ness regarding my bisexual identity, allowing for contemporary insights into my every day. Whilst painting emotes feelings that cannot be spoken, writing helps articulate my thoughts and is a fundamental part of my practice. My writings are inspired by the nonconsensual sexualisations of my flesh, the slut-shaming I experience and the wrongly branded promiscuous title I seemingly have, as a result of being an independent bisexual woman. This results in the subversive relationship I have with my politicized body, whilst striving to be my most authentic, empowered self. I wish to give voice and represent the 'others' through painting my lived feminine bisexual experience.
Between the Sheets.
DEAR DIARY 01: Unprovoked it falls from your mouth, branding my flesh, securing itself to my very being. The body which nurtures me holds me is me wilts under the tarnishing of your words. The looks which pierce my skin, scold through my clothing, undressing me before my own eyes. I become a character in a performance I did not audition for.
DEAR DIARY 02: My smile not met by the gawks which stray, that char and strip me. The clothes around me wrap tighter; my arms rigid concealing a form suppressed beneath.
DEAR DIARY 03: The relentless monotony of everyday isolation, the ups, and downs, the sexual frustrations and pleasures, the glimpsing humour, the passing of time, but most significantly the loneliness. The same four walls which entrap and contain me, comfort me. I am safe here.
DEAR DIARY 04: Cocooned and curled between soft sheets, denying the outside world access to me. Keeping me warm, keeping me protected, keeping me company. My eyes examine the repeated pattern I have grown up seeing, yet never tire from. The stripes, the colours, the familiarity. My home, my company.
DEAR DIARY 05: I’m almost nervous to leave, teetering by the threshold. The outside I once craved, yearned for. Reaching for the door handle my hand freezes as I close the door shut again, barricading my exit. I sit on my bed, gazing through the wall. Listening to the hum of electricity, allowing my thoughts to run dry from my mind. It’s blank again. It’s peaceful once more.
DEAR DIARY 06: Because I said so. I own my body and I intend to do what I wish with it. I can be sexual, explore my femininity and express my desire, but when I wish to. I do not live to fulfill the fantasy of your wandering thought, and no matter how much you shame me for my choices I hear them as empty words which ring through my ears departing as quickly as they enter. I do not do it for you. It is for me. Because I own my body, and because I said so.
DEAR DIARY 07: The romanticised performance you are so fascinated in, despite never buying a ticket. If you must watch the show that I did not consent to perform, then let me present all of me. Let me take you behind the scenes to show you how it is all made. The bits you do not see, the bits you do not want to see. The bits I live
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name; Ric Stott
Instagram account
Title
City of Infinite Gender
Abstract
My work in painting, drawing, writing, and ritual explores the interweaving of sensual queer experience with mystic spirituality. The words and image here emerge from a sex/art/magick ritual with my creative partner and so become a sacred relic and text that embody transcendent experience. In particular, with this work, I explore the boundary-blurring aspects of queer ways of being. In a trance-like space where restrictive, cis-heteronormative frameworks of gender and relationships dissolve and an infinite number of possible ways of being human to emerge
City of infinite gender
There is a city of infinite gender. All of humanity and all that is not human are welcome. For millennia people revelled there, joyfully, peacefully, creating, thriving, fucking, loving and magick abounded. But now gates of the city are seldom passed, at least by western men and women and, oh how they cling to those words. And tighter they cling so more tightly bound the city gates to become because you can only pass through with an open hand.
In the city, there is a street where those who dream of their gender live. Often, they call the same building their home for decades and then, at times, after an intense and visionary night’s sleep they will move to a different house and all their neighbours come to help them as it is a moment of celebration, not of crisis.
There is a district where partnerships of love and faithfulness gather: two, three, five or more. And each member of a group bound by love is assigned their gender by their lovers. Together they shape and mould their bodies so that they fit so intimately together, in triangles and pentacles and dodecahedrons with 12 genders each having their place in the whole.
There is an apartment block where all faces are covered, and all bodies exposed and a block where everyone paints colour on their skin with each new day as they wait at dawn for their gender to flow from their soul for that moment. And a tower where they download their gender from the internet when they choose.
There is an alleyway where bodies shift and change. A new orifice may open flowing with fertile juices never tasted before. Or an appendage grows a tentacle, a prehensile cock or two cocks or ten thousand. Or a cunt that opens in someone’s heart, gaping wide to make a portal to a brand new universe.
In the centre of the city is a garden of such beauty that teems with life. Flowers and seeds flourish with joyful fecundity. There are creeping things in the undergrowth, birds with iridescent wings, horned beasts and slithering beasts and all manner of magick. To walk in the garden is to open yourself up to the gift of new gender and whichever creature chooses you, they bestow upon you their bestial gender and every person sees divinity in that primal shift without questioning or fearing the animal flow.
There is a house where to make love is to shred each other’s skin and a house where gender only exists at night when everyone is silent, and the lights are off. There is a gender that laughs at sunset, there is a gender that weeps blood as they cum.
The city has no need for “man” or “woman” because such words are too small to contain the magnitude of humanity.
And each way of being human is miraculous.
And each way of being human is a gateway to a divine.
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