GLR July-August 2024

New Queer Art for Chicago’s Wrightwood 659’s commemora tion of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. About Face featured over 350 artworks by 38 international LGBT artists. Focusing on underrecognized interracial and multi-gendered artists across generations, Katz challenged prevailing cultural norms, which tend to overlook BIPOC and trans folks in favor of assimilated white and cisgender people. The show was a provocation for righting the canon of queer æsthetics. Katz’ intention was to “transcend a world of binary options, whether they be gay/straight, male/female, minority/majority, or conformist/nonconformist” and to focus “on art in which boundaries blur, forms mutate, the natural is denaturalized, and the transgressive and transcendent are linked.” Initial reviews didn’t know what to make of this audacious spectacle. TheNew York Times described it as “the most unconventional of the Stonewall anniversary shows,” while the critic for NewArt Ex aminer was “all turned around” by the exhibition’s “dizzying, infuriatingly overwhelming map.” A new catalogue for About Face published by Monacelli

Lankton’s tawdry sculptural dolls remind us of her ’80s East Village New York. Also included are Amos Badertscher’s an notated black-and-white photographs of Baltimore street hus tlers (in an exhibit reviewed by Steven Dansky in the March-April 2024 issue of this magazine). Katz’ hope was to “push the viewer out of the familiar, to offer a series of imaginative journeys into other logics and re alities beyond the categorical imperatives we know.” His am bitious state-of-the-field survey succeeds in capturing the ever-evolving hybrid intersectionality of queer æsthetics. The exhibition and its accompanying book, About Face , add im mensely to this process. _______________________________________________________ John R. Killacky is the author of Because Art: Commentary, Critique, & Conversation.

Of Bars and Bookstores

A NNE L AUGHLIN

A PLACE OF OUR OWN Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture by June Thomas Seal Press. 247 pages, $30. F OR LESBIANS of a certain age, reading June Thomas’ A Place of Our Own may bring on a wave of nostalgia, especially the parts about the 1970s and ’80s. Thomas has written a breezy yet substantial history of six types of spaces that have been important to our culture: lesbian bars, feminist bookstores, the softball diamond, lesbian land, feminist sex-toy stores, and vacation destinations. Each sort of space has its own unique vibe, but they all share a history of lesbians trying, and often failing, to make it in a heteronormative capitalistic society while prioritizing lesbian feminist ideals. The efforts were often heroic and the results transformative in the lives of the women who spent time in these spaces. I personally don’t know of any lesbian who has not been to a lesbian bar. To find a space where everyone knows your name, community abounds, and liquor is served to boot is an irresistible draw. For many, that first trip to a lesbian bar was literally their first time socializing with other lesbians. Its importance cannot be overstated. Back in the day, it was typically your only option for being among “your people.” Today, of course, there are many more options for community, which is one reason why the number of lesbian bars has plummeted from more than 200 in 1987 to fewer than three dozen today. Thomas details the financial challenges of running a lesbian bar from their earliest days on. Many of the owners were truly inspiring in their efforts to keep their bars open. Feminist bookstores provided community spaces for lesbians who were not necessarily into the bar scene and may have been more political in outlook. The author confides that these bookstores were “my Google, my Craigslist, my Tinder— and, of course, my Amazon.” They taught her about feminist theory, shaped her musical and reading tastes, provided a place

Press includes elucidating essays and texts by Julian Carter, An thony Cianciolo, Amelia Jones, Ava L. J. Kim, Joshua Cham bers-Letson, Christopher Reed, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Dagmawi Woubshet. This lushly designed book with 300 illus trations is proof of concept for Katz’ curatorial vision. Well known American artists such as Nick Cave, Keith Haring, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Peter Hujar are included, but more notewor thy is the introduction of Tianzhuo Chen’s and Leonard Surya jaya’s color-saturated photographs, Bhupen Khakhar’s figurative paintings, and Keioui Keijaun Thomas’ and Del LaGrace Vol cano’s performative tableaus. While the primary focus is on the new, the tapestry is en hanced by deceased artists. Representing the Bay Area are Har vey Milk’s early photographs from the 1950s, with both candid and formal portraits, and Jerome Caja’s irony-infused paintings created with day-glow colors as he was dying from AIDS. Greer 44

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