GAIN Group Exhibition | Close[t] Demonstrations. An exhibition on the multitudes of queer in_visibility
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 call is open to artists of all disciplines and media.
The exhibition will be showcasing works that address 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, authoritarian, neoliberal, capitalist regimes. As the title suggests, we want to explore visibilities, invisibilities, and the liminal, and perhaps overlapping, space between them as well as public, collective, and community-based manifestations of discontent and the need for social change.
We would like to invite artists of all disciplines and media to submit their work for this group exhibition exploring queer in_visibility. What does it mean to be visible/invisible/visibilised/invisibilised in your particular sociocultural context? How do queer subjects navigate enforced visibilities and imperatives of visibilisation (coming out of the closet)? How do they employ invisibility to exist, show solidarity, and resist?
We want minority voices to be amplified and as such we would like to explicitly invite works that deal with queerness and class, queerness and dis_ability, queerness and war, queerness and migration/flight.
We offer participating artists a 400 € artist fee and for new works developed for the exhibition an additional 250 € production budget.
The exhibition will be curated by Anna T., a migrant artist, educator, and curator based in Vienna and produced by academics and activists Katharina Wiedlack, Iain Zabolotny, and Giulia Andrighetto.
Part of the exhibition will be the outcome of the three-year-long research project "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.
The exhibition and the parallel educational programme are supported by SHIFT Basis.Kultur Vienna, the Austrian Research Fund (FWF), the research platform Gender: Ambivalent In_visibilities (GAIN) of the University of Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Gender Research Office of the University of Vienna, and the Austrian Students’ Union (ÖH).
Further information: https://closetdemonstrations-gain.univie.ac.at/call-for-arts/