If Not Home, Then Where? An Act of Queer Healing
Date
2022-05
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Abstract
This paper in consortium alongside the MFA Thesis exhibition “If Not Home,
Then Where” and the art history paper “Hidden Voices - The ancient lives of the
LBGTQ+ community seen through ceramics and sculpture”1 completes an preliminary
intersectional examination of queer identity conducted during this two year program. By exploring queer identity through the different lenses of art, history, language,
and space one can begin to understand the wide and complicated ranges of the queer
experience told from a queer point of view. So much is lacking in academic institutions when it comes to supporting queer identifying students especially with faculty, classes, and availably taught subjects. “Queer studies” is often religated to the study of Sex, and when looking at the Arts we see the cis/het majority’s sway. Queer art often puts queer bodies, hypererotizied, at the center showcasing queer identity purely by the sex the community has or by the genitals so often demanded to be put on display.
Often queer students and artists are made to bare their bodies and their intimate
moments. Their work is not authentic enough to be queer if those ideals, set historically
by the cis/het majority, are not met. I contest these ideals by refusing to showcase my
body or any other queer body in a way that puts their sex or sexuality on display. The
focus rather is to attempt to dig deeper into the queer experience, looking to themes
dealing with isolation, loneliness, homelessness, abuse, and the act of searching for
ourselves when the world seems to deny our existence time and time again.
Description
Thesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in the School of Art and Design at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY.
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Thesis
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Keywords
MFA thesis, Handicraft, Sexual minority culture, Installations (Art)