Queer Spectra 2020: Day One

Queer Spectra Arts Festival 2020 is a two day interactive virtual gallery (September 5-6, 2020) showcasing work by LGBTQIA+ individuals from the Salt Lake area as well as artists from across the nation. The gallery can be accessed for another week here. The festival’s theme this year is Risk of representation. Conveyed throughout the works presented are motifs of shame, social conflict, celebration of self, and the de-stigmatization of the Queer body. Each artist’s work speaks to a different facet of the Queer experience through photography, movement, poetry, painting, etcetera. 

The topic of Queer shame is a recurrent reference in many of the works presented. Samuel Beckett Does Drag (concept and performance by Emmett Wilson, videography by Matt “TheRat” Nelson, music by Ms. John Soda) is a drag performance in which the viewer is let in on complicated relationships to societal pressures of gender roles. A sock, at first being used as DIY packer for a mannequin prop, then stretched over the performer’s face, accomplishes a masking of identity mirroring real insecurities and shame revolving around exploration of gender expression and identity. In Nate Francis’ work, there is a sense of shame associated with the subject’s poses in the photographs and choice to keep their face hidden. The set of photographs creates an aura of malaise using a dark backdrop, green tones, and underexposure. 

Untitled: 26”x36” — photography by Nate Francis, 2020

The motif of social conflict in art is ever present as the fight for equality presses on.

Silence is Violent, a collection of spoken poems by Nico Sin, speaks powerfully on the subjects of erasure, discrimination, and violence towards LGBTQIA+ individuals under the influence of the LDS church in Utah and the continued effort to hold systems of oppression accountable for their acts against minority groups. On the matter of social media and dating, Two Questions by Tony Griego is a social experiment asking eleven individuals, age 18-70, “What would you say is the biggest struggle being gay in this day and age?” and “What is most important in life?” on the popular Gay dating/hookup app, Grindr. This work looks at the difficulties of forming an intimate bond with someone in the era of social media and hookup culture.

Self Portrait by Steven Salabsky

Concepts of destigmatizing the Queer, Black body are evident in works by Jordan Simmons and Steven Salabsky. LIFTED, a short dance film (direction, editing, choreography, and performance by Jordan Simmons, direction and videography by Malcolm Fields, music by Jazmine Sullivan, cover art by Taylar Jackson) presents a celebration of self. Filmed out in nature, artist, Jordan Simmons, embraces their transgender body through movement combining fluid contemporary movement, Krump, and other dance forms. Close up shots show him smiling and wearing his top surgery scars proudly. In Self Portrait, a series of three painted self portraits by Steven Salabsky, the artist paints himself getting in and out of the bathtub, an everyday task to showcase humanity against the harsh criminal stereotype that is placed upon black men today.

Day one came to a close with a live Zoom performance: I heard it’s worse if you open your mouth. A movement exploration choreographed and performed by Dominica Greene with music by Simon and Garfunkle, Bach, and Tchaikovsky. The artist’s body contrasting with classical compositions by the historical white man amplifies the differences of being a Queer, BIPOC in a white heteronormative society, encompassing the concepts of shame, social conflict, and destigmatization highlighted by the event’s theme, Risk of representation.

Harlie Heiserman (they/them/theirs) is a dance artist originally from the D.C. metropolitan area. They trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance prior to relocating to Salt Lake City where they are a current member of SALT2 and Oquirrh West Project. Harlie’s work and research is driven by heightened emotional states, instinct, and effort.

An archway of participation and a call to action

Since May, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, citizens across the country have defaced, destroyed, and advocated for the removal of racist, colonial-centered monuments. At the Minnesota State Capitol, a statue of Christopher Columbus was ripped from its pedestal and thrown face down on the pavement. In Richmond, Virginia, the Robert E. Lee Monument was covered in spray paint and has been the site of weeks of protests. In Salt Lake, red paint was strewn across the “Serve and Protect” sculpture of bronze hands that resides in front of the Downtown Public Safety Building.

In this context that Kathy Tran, a design educator, and Alex Moya, an artist who migrated from Mexico to Utah as a teenager, enacted Tomorrow’s Monument. This participatory art piece is a part of Pain and Possibility, a community art series hosted by Sugar Space Arts Warehouse and Mestizo Institute of Culture & Arts. It is in this context of destroying monuments that these artists envisioned and launched a new sort of monument—one that embraces community and participation. 

At eight pm on September 3, I walked along the grassy median right outside the Sugar Space Arts Warehouse. The sun was low in the sky offering an orange haze for the last few minutes of the day. In the center of the grass stood a large white arch constructed from stretched white spandex offering the impression of marble architecture. The organizers scampered around the structure in a buzz of last-minute construction: adjusting cords, repositioning laptops, and angling projectors. 

In just a few minutes, the neighborhood was swarmed in darkness. Several lampposts that reached above the tree tops gleamed like little moons in the surrounding sky. The monument was illuminated by the contrasting darkness and glowed with stoic presence. 

Words filtered across the top panel of the arch expressing that, “We don’t need another monument. But people dedicated to eliminating racism.” Meanwhile, projectors cast the image of two white men that moved ever so slightly. The choices of these figures provoked questions for me. Was their presence intended as a parody? Were they meant to invoke the essence of so many historic monuments? Were they chosen as an intentional criticism of the dominating presence many monuments entail? 

As I mulled over these questions, I felt an itch that I did not want these figures on the monuments of tomorrow. They don’t belong as the front facing images of the fight against racism. For a monument that reaches to the future, that calls upon solidarity, and acknowledges the need for change, I craved for two white men to not be the projected relics.

Tran and Moya structured Tomorrow’s Monument with participatory action. Individuals and groups of people were directed to walk and stand under the arch. Once underneath the structure, the projection recognized the presence of bodies and progressed in segments to read: 

Breath

For Those

Who Can’t

And then, a tree appeared that quivered and stretched while small green buds pushed out of the branches. The light evening breeze seemed to mix with these electronic pixels and ground the experience in reality. 

I loved watching families entering the arch together. Several kids pulled their parents back around to the front, to line up, and take a turn at entering the arch again. These families would stand in the arch, huddled together, in a shared moment to acknowledge the violence of racism and breathe in a commitment toward future action. 

This cycle of text and images took about 30 seconds to complete. This offered time to the audience. This was a moment where participants breathed together, reflected, and perhaps considered actions of future change. Upon exiting the archway, the back of monument billowed in clouds of smoke that expanded like grey parachutes. I was struck by the implication of the temporal. Logistically, this monument is only on display for two short nights, unlike so many other permanent, unchanging monuments and memorials. The smoke added the implication that this arch was in the process of being destroyed. What remains when the physical structures come crumbling? When symbolic forms are torn to the ground, what do you do next?

If you have shown up to demonstrate your solidarity for anti-racist work, what do you do when Tomorrow’s Monument is no longer standing? What action do you take after the symbolic gestures are completed? Will you continue to show up and engage in anti-racist work?

Rachel Luebbert is a Utah-based dance artist. She also teaches and works in arts administration and programming, and has previously worked in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. Her work will be seen at the upcoming Queer Spectra Arts Festival.

Shm00fi3zZ Virtual Birthing: A Queer Orwellian Spacescape in the Age of COVID

It’s both difficult and amusing to consider where to begin after witnessing the Shm00fie3zz Birthing. 

The basic, “what does it mean?” expresses a genuine desire, but feels almost disingenuous when examining the series, captivatingly conceived of and performed by local artists Natalie Allsup-Edwards, Molly Mostert, and Emmett Wilson. The Shm00fi3zZ Birthing, hosted on possibly the most garishly dystopian of all platforms: Instagram Live, mounts the ritual births of the Shm00fi3zZ, adorable beanie baby-like space aliens, who are immediately auctioned off for adoption by the Inter-Dimensional & Galactic Adoption Foundation, Inc. (IDGAF). The piece is a continuation of the long-term performance art series typically conducted live but modified for COVID-19 safety.  Both delightful and sinister, watching the Shm00fi3zZ live on Instagram is akin to watching the Teletubbies read Orwell. 

screenshots by Max Barnewitz

Adult Shm00fi3zZ are near impossible to ignore. The large harlequin space cyclopses, embodied by Mostert and Wilson, dance with exaggerated and guileless movement, emitting high pitched squeaks and buzzes, presumably with unseen kazoos. While the Shm00fi3zZ, like walking Lisa Frank notebooks, are so aggressively cute that they express some sort of uncanny horror, Wwanda Star, the Adoption Agent for the mysterious and/or nefarious IDGAF judiciously played by Allsup-Edwards, is just as engrossing. With stilted optimism, Allsup-Edwards grimaces from behind Martian green face paint while narrating the scientific observations about the Shm00fi3zZ whose offspring she collects, tags, and auctions off. 

The queer performance piece is unsurprisingly resistant to moralization. Indeed, in the spirit of both strict postmodernism and absurdist millennial humor, applying meaning is probably what audiences should avoid. However, for the purposes of entertaining ideas, it is worth postulating that the Shm00fi3zZ could be 1) a dark metaphor for animal rights, 2) a biting critique of the mistreatment of immigrant families by the United States government, 3) a reminder of the inevitable commodification of the body in a capitalist society, 4) a commentary on the pitfalls and horrors of the art making process. 

Over the trills and toots of the Shm00fi3zZ, Wwanda made the eerie assertions that “when they’re not birthing, they’re working” and “it is so difficult to give away the things you create.” Over the course of the performance, her growing obsession with “productivity” belied one of the central themes of the Shm00fi3zZ piece: greed. Ultimately, while Wwanda is willing to go to great lengths to explain away the Shm00fi3zZ objectification – they are “ill equipped to care for babies” – audiences must choose where they stand. Do we believe Wwanda is doing what’s right for the adorable baby Shm00fi3zZ? Or do we support the adult Shm00fi3zZ in their struggle to keep their innumerable offspring? Much like said babies and the swarmy, grotesque bodies of the adults, questions are plentiful, comical, and disturbing.

The Shm00fi3zZ Birthing delivered (if you’ll pardon the pun) surprising twists and turns, plus many humorous Easter eggs to which Allsup-Edwards dutifully pointed the viewers. Past Shm00fi3zz shows have embraced a need to stay in-character that rivals that of the Muppets. As a result, audiences are immediately drawn into the narrative. Not to be inhibited by social distance, the trio encouraged audiences to interact with the Shm00fi3zZ. Viewers could dance at home (to promote the birthing process!), ask questions of Wwanda via the chat feature, and even order the baby Shm00fi3zz via eBay. As bizarre and fascinating as the Shm00fi3zZ Virtual Birthing may be, the trio of artists produced an outrageously complete, provocative, and well-constructed show that let audiences’ minds and bodies go wild.

Max Barnewitz is a writer, comics enthusiast, and outdoor nerd based in Salt Lake City. Max graduated with an M.A. in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Utah in 2016. Their thesis, “The Animal As Queer Act in Comics: Queer Iterations in On Loving Women and Nimona” underscores the potential for comics to portray LGBTQ+ identities. They also serve on the organizing committees for Salt Lake’s Grid Zine Fest and for Queer Spectra Arts Festival, which premieres this weekend.

A Salty Showcase at Reservoir Park

Indigo Cook and Christina Hughes’ new Salty Showcase series took shape this Thursday in Reservoir Park. The dance on offer was a duet by Nora Lang and Tori Meyer, as well as poetry by Gray. Clearly a work in progress, the images below give a sense of the exuberance the duo brought to a weekday afternoon in the park. Meyer and Lang asked the audience to view their dance through glass jars – which also served as seating guides for social distancing. Hopefully this event will continue to offer more opportunities for dancers.

– SBH, editor

Tori Meyer, in the foreground, Nora Price and audience in the background

An audience member views the dance through a pyrex glass jar

Andrew Alba explores race, class & bodies in public spaces outdoors

In downtown Salt Lake, nestled in the shadows of skyscrapers and the rumble of passing Trax cars, five sculptures emerged on Friday afternoon. It was the middle of the day, just after lunch when the pavement had been thoroughly heated from the sun. These sculptures are pieces in Andrew Alba’s multi-site project WORKED that are being displayed throughout Salt Lake on various dates. WORKED is a part of the Pain and Possibility art series catalyzed by Sugar Space Arts Warehouse and Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts to provide a platform for artists to engage with the painful present in all its complexity.

On August 28, these sculptures appeared outside Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) on the entrance ramp. They were aligned in a small gathering, all facing different ways that forced museum attendees to walk through the bodies on their way to the entrance. The soft notes of Cumbia music sifted in the air from a small portable speaker just behind the sculptures. Passing pedestrians gently bopped their shoulders as they walked by and passing car drivers turned their head to observe the small gathering of humans and art.

The five sculptures resemble Latinx humans in the middle of a day’s work. They are covered in real clothing: a blue flannel shirt, black shoes with a white Nike label, a flowing white top with plastic, silver embroidery, cloth masks, a grey bandana, black pants splattered in paint. The faces of these figures seemed to be constructed with a paper machete type material with sculpted faces, large daring eyes, and swirling colors. The essence of the faces brought to mind the neo-expressionism artistic style and resembles many of Alba’s large-scale paintings that have been displayed at UMOCA and Finch Lane Gallery. This use of multiple materials created a striking combination of literal objects and abstract creations — offering a brilliant fusion of the tangible and the imagined, of something that is both deeply human and also an artistic creation.

The five figures facilitated an evolving sense of movement. WORKED is a durational performance. One figure with a bun at the peak of her head stood with one black pant leg rolled part way up the leg, the white shirt that laid over her implied body, flowed and rippled in the wind. The other sculptures held postures that implied movement. One sat on a paint bucket with shoulders hunched, hands resting between his legs, eyes gazing downward. There was the tangible sense of exhaustion; the weight of hard work sunk down the limbs of his body. Later into the afternoon, Alba picked up the figure in a brown hoodie that held a crescent-shaped shovel and carried him across the street in front of a storefront window of City Creek Mall. The window was filled with yellow, smiley faced balloons advertising some unremarkable sale. I was struck by the multiple layers of juxtaposition of this moment: a sculpture with a handcrafted face standing in front of mass produced, identical balloons. The earthy shades of browns that covered the sculpture’s face, clothing, and shovel against the monotonous, single-toned yellow of the advertisement. And the essence that our economy is run by the working-class (especially during a pandemic) against the backdrop of artificial sentimentalities.

One figure particularly caught the attention of intrigued pedestrians. The sculpture was on all fours covered in dark clothing and work shoes. He had large hands with fingers splayed wide across the ground and a sombrero slung across his neck, which is often seen as a reminder of the Southwestern and Central American workers’ rights movement. Multiple people dropped on their hands and knees, mirroring his position and peering at his face. Later a small child ambled up to the sculpture and plopped down directly across from him.

The child continued to sit there for multiple minutes, seemingly making eye contact with him. This sculptural installation is critical, raw, and emotional. Alba responds to the current and complex injustices that surround our country during a pandemic. These figures call critique to the hard, dangerous work that Latinx individuals complete every day that is essential to this country’s functioning and yet are treated as ‘non-essential’ components of the economy. In an interview with Modern West Fine Arts, Alba explained components of his artistic process, “I sculpt using everyday materials from my day job in construction. While materials like drop cloths, drywall mud, concrete, and lumber aren’t archival-quality, I am interested in how these materials will enact the inescapable slow decay of blue-collar bodies.” Alba brings real materials from the experiences of working in construction to protest the racist systems of the U.S.. Specifically, during a pandemic where working class communities are put at high risk of COVID-19, Alba’s work humanizes working-class individuals and calls outrage to their experience.

This sculptural installation will emerge at several other locations throughout Salt Lake:

September 1-2 at Wasatch Community Gardens (622 W 100 S)

September 3 from 2-5pm at Modern West Fine Art (412 S 700 W)

It is intentional that WORKED is on display on week days during typical working hours. Alba says, “My work is for tired, working people.” It is for the construction worker walking down the sidewalk to the next project, it is for the Uber driver transporting people through city streets, and it is for the essential humans that are worn down by the injustice of our socio-economic system.

Rachel Luebbert is a Utah-based dance artist. She also teaches and works in arts administration and programming, and has previously worked in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. Her work will be seen at the upcoming Queer Spectra Arts Festival.