At their worst (and far too often), art exhibits are irrelevant to the public. They’re a flex for the curator, a densely written monologue that falls on deaf ears. At their best, they’re a revelation – like being embraced after you’ve poured your heart out to someone. If it feels like that, the curator has done their job; they’ve listened, and they’ve met the moment.
On view through June 29, Gallery 263’s “Contemporary Queer: A Love Letter”’ is one of the latter. This national group exhibition presents a joyful, wide-ranging collection of queer art that warms the heart and tickles the senses. For the first time, board co-presidents Lucy Yan and Laura Kathrein selected submissions.
Juniper Wolfenbarger’s “hard to let go” is a highlight. It’s a still life hand-embroidered beautifully on linen, showing a red evening glove splayed on top of tan lace underwear. A cigarette butt and white lighter give the sense this was a night to remember (or perhaps, given the title, hard to forget). Taylor Maroney’s oil painting “IYKYK (Dylan)” is both technically excellent and magical to look at. A trans person lies in a bed, yet we see their torso only; transcending that clinical environment, they are made of forest rather than flesh.
Other works on view are equally inventive with their materials. Kai Lum’s “Hardened Heart” depicts the organ in ceramic; a stainless steel chain surrounds it. Saul Xtopher’s “Heaven Bound” binds a Bible in a rainbow of vibrant, interlocking zip ties.
It’s the audience that really brought the exhibit to life Friday, packing the gallery’s snug space for an opening celebration that included readings from “Super Gay Poems,” an anthology published this year by Harvard professor Stephanie Burt. Readers took turns reciting on top of the gallery’s picture windowsill.
In an astonishingly productive era for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, “Contemporary Queer” meets that hostile moment with sheer determination, the will to survive. The exhibit is reminiscent of that bell hooks quote: that while queerness might partly be about who you have sex with, it’s really about being “the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
“Contemporary Queer” is at Gallery 263, 263 Pearl St., Cambridgeport, through June 29.
Share your own 150-word appreciation for a piece of visual art or art happening with photo to editor@cambridgeday.com with the subject line “Behold.”
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