Day: February 13, 2018

Earlier this month, New York’s Alfred University hosted an art exhibit called the Queering Space. Among several goals, the event was largely intended to answer the question: “What is a queer perspective?” The exhibit featured several artists including Tommy Kha, the creator of an installation titled “Return to Sender,” a collection of 88 photographs featuring the same man kissing a different person (of various genders) in each one.

 

What makes these photos interesting to me is that in each, the man looks quite bored, almost annoyed at times. In conjunction with the title, “Return to Sender,” I interpret this artistic choice to be suggesting that although Kha feels able to love whomever he chooses, the result has remained dissatisfying. Perhaps the boredom in the photographs indicates that, of the 88 people, not one was able to create a feeling of true love within him.

#LGBTQexperiencesUSA#queeringspace#photography#love

Kha, Tommy. Return to Sender. 2010, digital c-type prints, The Queering Space, Alfred University.

–AG

This is a sheet of canvas that was signed by University of Rochester students and members of the community in 1994 as part of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The project features a massive quilt (this section of the quilt is 12’ by 12’), and commemorates those who have died from AIDS. I was moved by the messages left on the sheet, where people addressed friends and family who have died from the disease, or longed for a cure.

#LGBTQexperiencesUSA #NAMESproject #AIDS #cure

-ML

I was born and raised in Erie County, and went to high school in Buffalo. My parents worked in the city practically my whole life, and I spent more time downtown than nearly any of my peers during my early childhood. And yet I never heard a whisper about Buffalo’s lesbian history. My high school always claimed to focus on the importance of emphasizing women’s perspectives, but we never explicitly talked about a single LGBTQ woman, at least not that I can remember. It is so fortunate that this history is being collected, but now it must be told. #LGBTQexperiencesUSA #LesbianHistory #BuffaloNY #WNY

This image is from the January 1982 publication of a newspaper called New Women’s Times. This specific section is titled “Abortion Briefs” and it contains six statements of varying severity on the limited access that women had to abortion clinics. It depicts the measures some women took in order to ensure that they would not have to have children. Many of the separate statements articulate how “anti-abortion bills [were] passed” or how there were bans on “state-funded abortions” – all indicating that people other than those who are pregnant were dictating the rules and regulations that must be followed.

#lgbtqexperiencesusa  #abortions  #stateregulations #awomansrighttochoose

[Image courtesy of UR’s River Campus Libraries Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation]

-MF