Close[t] Demonstrations
Close[t] Demonstrations
an exhibition on the multitudes of queer invisibility
Semmelweisklinik: Centre for Arts and Culture Vienna, Austria
3/11 - 24/11/2023
Submit your project for consideration here
Open Call: 9/1/2023-10/2/2023
An interdisciplinary exhibition presenting artists who imagine a new visual politics of queer representation and explore the connection between desires, ways of living and societal change in visible and/or invisible ways.
The exhibition comprises artists from around the world showcasing work that addresses the relationship between the political and the visual, and explore visual aspects of today’s queer lives, struggles and imaginations. The artworks attempt to unearth the power dynamics, pleasures, and desires involved in queer in_visibilty, and the diverse ways queer in_visibilities manifest within (post)colonial, authoritatarian, neoliberal, capitalist regimes. The exhibition will include time-based media as well as paintings, illustrations, and sculptures, all of which will be in conversation with each other addressing the topic through different techniques and methodologies. The artworks presented will be by invited artists as well as artists selected through an open call. Part of the exhibition will be the outcome of the three-year-long research produced by the “Magic Closet and the Dream Machine” which explores conceptualisations of queerness within the former soviet space and will showcase alternative ways of sharing research data in emotive and creative ways.
Seminars, Workshops and more
A parallel educational and participatory programme, based on radical inclusion, is planned which will include in-person and virtual events.
Prior to the exhibition a joint seminar course titled “Methodologies of In_visibility: Gender & Sexuality, Art & Theory” is planned for the SS of 2023 between the University of Vienna (Gender Studies) and the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Ceramics Class) that will offer students an opportunity to explore the themes of the exhibition’s topic through theoretical and practical/artistic aspects. The artistic component will be led by Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva (ceramics studio), and the theoretical ones by Katharina Wiedlack and Anna T. The documentation of the creative process will also be shared with the public during the exhibition.
Team
This exhibition is a collaboration between the research platform "GAIN - Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities" and the FWF project “The Magic Closet and the Dream Machine: Post-Soviet Queerness, Archiving, and the Art of Resistance” at the University of Vienna, the Academy of Fine arts Vienna.
The exhibition is curated by Mag. Dr. Anna T., an artist, educator, and curator based in Vienna. Her artistic, curatorial, and scholarly work draw from poststructuralism, queer theory, decoloniality, peripheral knowledge, aesthetics, and affect.
Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Katharina Wiedlack is project leader of the exhibition and the art research project "Magic Closet and the Dream Machine" on the representation of queer life in/from the post-Soviet space. She is Assistant Professor for Anglophone Cultural Studies at the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna.
Artists, speakers, and workshop leaders
The list of our contributors includes, but is not limited to:
Naomi Rincón Gallardo (Mexico) is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist whose work addresses the creation of counter-worlds in neo-colonial settings. Her critical-mythical worldmakings integrate her interests in Mesoamerican cosmologies, music videos, speculative fiction, vernacular festivities and crafts, decolonial feminisms and queer of color critique.
Pêdra Costa (Brazil/Germany) is a ground breaking, formative Brazilian, visual and urban anthropologist, tarot reader and performer based in Berlin that utilizes intimacy to connect with collectivity. Their work aims to decode violence and transform failure whilst tapping into the powers of resilient knowledge from a plethora of subversive ancestralities that have been integral anti-colonial and necropolitical survival.
Elahe Haschemi Yekani (Germany) is Professor of English and American Literature and Culture with a focus on Postcolonial Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. A cultural and literary studies scholar, she has worked on topics like the Anglophone novel, Black Atlantic and Diasporic Writing, Gender/Masculinity Studies and Queer Theory, and Popular and Visual Culture. She is the author of Familial Feeling and The Privilege of Crisis. Her latest book Revisualising Intersectionality, written with Magdalena Nowicka and Tiara Roxanne, has just been published open access with Palgrave Macmillan.
Lesia Pagulich (Ukraine/USA) is a queer feminist researcher and activist. Lesia holds master’s degrees in International Economics and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. Her research interests lie in the fields of critical race, queer, feminist, and postsocialist studies.
Tatsiana Shchurko (Belarus/USA) is a researcher and queer feminist activist. In 2008, Tatsiana received a Master’s degree in Gender studies at the European Humanities University. Recently, Tatsiana received her Ph.D. at the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include queer feminist art, transnational feminism, postcolonial and decolonial theories, critical race studies, socialist and postsocialist studies, and politics of solidarity.
