Curators' Statement
Queerness and resilience are intertwined. Creative and joyful ways of living, expression, art-making, caring, and being in community provide a sustaining force for queerness and the love found within that label. Resilience seeks an alternative to the vision laid out by systems of oppression that would want queer people isolated, conforming, powerless, and silent. Queer resilience asks us to turn towards our own inner power and grow with it in a loving community.
Many of the artifacts on this website engage with the resilient creativity of queer artists. Musical or literary creation is a method of knowing oneself more deeply and extending that understanding to queer people of the past, present, and future. In the lyrics of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” or Audre Lorde’s poetry, we are asked to connect with the foundational beauty of queerness, a beauty that emerges through time and through hardship. Artistic work invites us to find and celebrate the love that prevails within and beyond systemic oppression, highlighting the resilience of community and creation.
Similarly, intentional and subversive expressions of gender and identity offer further insights into the resilience of queer people. To imagine an expression that feels whole and truthful often requires the bravery to push persistently against the rigid boundaries of normative gender expectations. Such constraints can be painful, but the resilience it takes to innovate and continuously present authentically makes these examples all the more meaningful. Queer theorists such as Judith Butler and Michel Foucault have worked to illuminate the ways in which these constraints are constructed and maintained (Jagose 8). In the complexities of gender identity and the subversive ways of recreating it, queer resilience is revealed again and again.
As the boundaries of oppressive systems are enforced more harshly, especially in moments of crisis, more direct action is required. Activism is a time-honored tradition from so many social movements throughout history, and the LGBTQ contingent is no exception. During the AIDS crisis (1980s–1990s), when so many cherished community members were sick and dying, strength in resilience proved essential (How to Survive a Plague, 1:24:00–1:30:00). Through arrests, political funerals, and state violence, the connections of community sustained activists through immense hardship.
In each of the themes presented here, a connecting thread of resilience, togetherness, and pride move through the exhibit. These artifacts picture a critical time in queer history, spanning from Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” in 1978 to a 2000 photograph of Sylvia Rivera. Resilience is the force that moves through the queer community and sustains us through oppression in all its forms. To move towards community and liberatory expression, even in the face of immense adversity, offers a valuable map for the dismantling of all systems of oppression. ​