Closet Demonstrations

Optics of Q***r Migration - a discussion and a text by Ewa Maczynska & Tegiye Birey with Henry Dennis.

What does the adjective “q***r” do to the noun “migration”?

Deemed strange and out of place, q***rness and migration catch each other’s eye. As long as the citizen is naturalized as the primary subject of politics, the migrant will stay an overgeneralized and ambiguous caricature lacking rights and emitting difference, coloured in by strokes of racialisation, fetishisation and pathologization. And as long as the normative citizen is depicted as cisgender and heterosexual, q***rness will likely evoke an alienation from majority norms and related resources. This mirroring effect sets up the stage for optical dilemmas q***r bodies on the move face, but does not exhaust them.

The question of q***r migration gained popularity in academic, activist, and artistic circles in the past three decades with a focus on the experiences and needs of people whose migration is perceived to be dictated by their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. The q***r migrant is often thought of as a person who embarked on the migratory route because they are q***r and thus they migrate with a hope to find themselves in a more "q***r-friendly" social and political environment, or whose experience of migration is primarily shaped by their q***rness. While we recognize the importance of such conceptualizations in face of the systematic erasure of related needs and experiences, we are also curious to complexify this narrative by investigating how the construction and management of each of those categories, q***r and migrant, influences the other. We recognize migration and q***rness as regimes of power through which subjects are constructed and governed through immigration policies, racialized narratives of citizenship and belonging, global lgbtq discourses, pinkwashing, homophobic policies as well as q***r progressive narratives that aim to reject but also often reproduce the legitimacy of heteronormative and middle-class social norms such as respectability and productivity.

Full text available in the exhibition catalogue in English, Italian and Georgian, pages 100-111.

Textile book of stories about clothes 2 by ReSew collective.

Textile book of stories about clothes 2 (Textile stories, Book 2) was created in Kyiv in November and December 2021 during a series of workshops held by Tonya (Ton) Melnyk and Masha Ravlyk in the ReSew sewing cooperative working space.
The subject of the book was a personal story about clothes. Each page was filled in textile using mixed techniques: patchwork, collage, stencils, embroidery, and others. At some point, an understanding of the political nature of the visual statement came: it was about poorness, about women’s and not cis experience, about body shape and selfcare, about relationships with dear people, ecological behavior, attitude to clothes, and other topics.
In general, there were 10 participants who created 11 stories. All were working in quite a flexible way, discussing with Ton and Masha a comfortable time for them to come to the workshop, use the equipment and have consultations. Each person was working by themselves, but hosts were helping with technical things and advice. All of this made the process of sewing the book very comfortable, safe, and supportive.
We present the book together with a podcast about all the stories, told by the participants of the workshops.

The artwork description is available in Ukrainian, German and English in the exhibition catalogue, pages 53-54.

Photos by Cansu Tandoğan

“S l i p p e r y Recollective States of Consciousness II” by İlhak Alltıparmak

The series “S l i p p e r y Recollective States of Consciousness II” can be read as a tacit narration of a subjective, lubricious, and unfixable remembrance. Central presence of the male body in the work entails an inquiry of the concept of “masculinity” in terms of image and content. Carrying symbolic tattoos on their bodies on the stage of the hammam, these men fit in the framing of voyeurism. Beyond its tangible qualities, the dualism of space and body is indicative of a conceptualization of the holistic unity of the self considering the vital acts the self performs.

The artwork description is available in Turkish, Kurdish and English in the exhibition catalogue, pages 39-40.

coming full circle only to loop back over by Sophia Yuet See

"coming full circle only to loop back over uses intimate texts and the motif of the
loop to explore the repetitive, messy and fragmented nature of memory, obsession,
trauma, marginalisation and the systemic cycles of oppression and capitalism. This
piece reflects on the liminal space of being a q***r, Asian person; how
heteronormativity, q***rphobia, colonialism and white supremacy converge, and
the complexity and erasure of my q***rness as a result of my non-whiteness —
‘being in the company of white people, you can never fully leave your body behind
and its ideologies.’ The diagrams and texts draw parallels with the cyclical patterns
of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, examining the connections between
oppression, racism, trauma, hypervigilance and OCD, and how they inform each
other."

artwork description available in Chinese, German and English in the exhibition catalogue, pages 59-60.