I just attended this awesome workshop that made me ask myself important questions that I hadn’t addressed before about how race and queerness affect my art.
I realized that I tend to separate my personal identity from my work. In discussing the question, “What makes your art queer, or not?”, I answered that my art wasn’t queer unless it specifically addressed the subject of being queer. Someone else said the opposite – that their art was queer irregardless of the subject material, simply because it was being produced by herself, a lesbian woman.
Also, I realized something important regarding my race in the first activity, when we had to group ourselves according to what race we identified as. I put myself in the White/Caucasian group. The facilitator had us discuss what we enjoy about our race, and then construct a performance of solely movement that expressed that racial identity. We had a hard time finding things to say. There were many benefits and privileges that come with being White/Caucasian that we pointed out, but mostly there were feelings of uneasiness and discomfort. Our movement performance consisted of us awkwardly milling about, sometime pausing to look at each other, but mostly moving away from each other.
We brought up the issue of wanting to break free of labels while also wanting to explore our identies in our art, but didn’t come to any sort of resolution. It seemed that we all had a different opinion on the matter. Is this writing of mine queer because I am queer, or is this writing of mine queer because I discuss queer art?
Crafted Ruminations 