c o n s p i c u o u s c o m p o n e n t s: MFA thesis exhibition
2024
statement:
c o n s p i c u o u s c o m p o n e n t s
is a study in queer (il)legibility, ecology, and community. Queer is used here as an inherently indefinable verb.
In an era of rising anti-LGBTQ2IA+ rhetoric, legislation, and hate crimes, this work is evidence
of a response - one full year of cultivating insistently queer space in Athens County.
Taking a loose definition of queer space as ‘any relational experience generated between queer
people’ [Lucas LaRochelle], expanded to include the more-than-human, the exhibition explores
connection and visibility from the homespace [and garden bed] outwards.
The pieces within consider questions including:
What is left behind of contemporary queer life?
How do I/we engage in love: platonic, romantic, self, community, and otherwise?
What does markedly queer kinship look and feel like? And for whom is this mark legible?
c o n s p i c u o u s c o m p o n e n t s navigates these inquiries through the lens of queer ecology: a perspective that challenges heterosexist and binary views of ecosystems and the beings within them, instead favoring fluid and subjective perspectives. By inviting collaborators from the OHIO LGBT Center, the soil, the artist’s domestic / personal networks, and the larger southeast Ohio community, this exhibition acts as a living archive of one small ecosystem of rural queer life.
All colors present were coaxed from plants grown in the artist’s Community Food Initiatives garden plot or gently foraged* in Athens County.
In color-producing order:
red/pink: smooth sumac*, cosmos
orange/yellow: sulfur cosmos, marigold, calendula, goldenrod*
green/blue: japanese indigo [persicaria tinctoria], hopi sunflower, stinging nettle*
purple: hollyhock, cosmos, scabiosa
brown: marigold, black walnut*
Visitors to the exhibition were invited to carefully touch all artworks.
this show received generous support from:
emma loomis-amrhein, kate hampel, duane mcdiarmid, jennie klein, sam dodd, john stathopoulos, benjamin siegel,
sarah doherty | the ohio university lgbt center
amy fugikawa + raya abner | community food initiatives eastside garden
shockley traub | OU galleries staff
graduate student senate original works grant
quilting bee sewists
installation crew: lucy osborne, alyssa kiel, ray perez, zelda thayer-hansen, john, + emma
and the plants <3 thank you
a reading list can be found at tinyurl.com/CCreadinglist
photos by bee heulsman
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2024
statement:
c o n s p i c u o u s c o m p o n e n t s
is a study in queer (il)legibility, ecology, and community. Queer is used here as an inherently indefinable verb.
In an era of rising anti-LGBTQ2IA+ rhetoric, legislation, and hate crimes, this work is evidence
of a response - one full year of cultivating insistently queer space in Athens County.
Taking a loose definition of queer space as ‘any relational experience generated between queer
people’ [Lucas LaRochelle], expanded to include the more-than-human, the exhibition explores
connection and visibility from the homespace [and garden bed] outwards.
The pieces within consider questions including:
What is left behind of contemporary queer life?
How do I/we engage in love: platonic, romantic, self, community, and otherwise?
What does markedly queer kinship look and feel like? And for whom is this mark legible?
c o n s p i c u o u s c o m p o n e n t s navigates these inquiries through the lens of queer ecology: a perspective that challenges heterosexist and binary views of ecosystems and the beings within them, instead favoring fluid and subjective perspectives. By inviting collaborators from the OHIO LGBT Center, the soil, the artist’s domestic / personal networks, and the larger southeast Ohio community, this exhibition acts as a living archive of one small ecosystem of rural queer life.
All colors present were coaxed from plants grown in the artist’s Community Food Initiatives garden plot or gently foraged* in Athens County.
In color-producing order:
red/pink: smooth sumac*, cosmos
orange/yellow: sulfur cosmos, marigold, calendula, goldenrod*
green/blue: japanese indigo [persicaria tinctoria], hopi sunflower, stinging nettle*
purple: hollyhock, cosmos, scabiosa
brown: marigold, black walnut*
Visitors to the exhibition were invited to carefully touch all artworks.
this show received generous support from:
emma loomis-amrhein, kate hampel, duane mcdiarmid, jennie klein, sam dodd, john stathopoulos, benjamin siegel,
sarah doherty | the ohio university lgbt center
amy fugikawa + raya abner | community food initiatives eastside garden
shockley traub | OU galleries staff
graduate student senate original works grant
quilting bee sewists
installation crew: lucy osborne, alyssa kiel, ray perez, zelda thayer-hansen, john, + emma
and the plants <3 thank you
a reading list can be found at tinyurl.com/CCreadinglist
photos by bee heulsman
