Key Terms: queerness, erasure, life stages, liberation, iconoclast, conformity, fear, trust, mental health, capitalism

MEETING MINUTES

During this working group, participants worked to undermine the darkness of pessimism and reprisal directly, by forging relationships which sought to build bridges rather than burn them.

Jeamin Cha began the conversation with her video work entitled “It Is Not a Question But a Balloon,” which featured the narration of Lim Su-Kyung. With this video, Jeamin channeled the words of the controversial political figure (who was persecuted for championing Korean reunification through her involvement with pro-North Korean student activist group Hanchongnyon) to ask the question, “can I trust the past with my own experience?” The video seeks to answer visually. Fear is represented in the first half with the image of a weighed down balloon, while in the second half the balloon gently drifts away to signal hope.

Marie Martraire then talked about directing Kadist, a nonprofit contemporary art organization with which she hopes to bring a greater global and interdisciplinary footprint to the contemporary art world. The collections she’s curated have been especially interested in building cross-cultural connections and fostering lasting collaborative relationships. Marie took the opportunity to acknowledge Jeamin’s residency at Kadist, which facilitated Cha’s her ongoing research on the complex relationships between mental health and capitalism.

Gazelle Samizay and Labkhand Olfatmanesh spoke next, introducing their collaborative video work “Bepar” (Hop). The two share a close bond inspired by their Afghan and Iranian heritage, and have used their collaboration to tackle subjects such as trauma and commanding one’s fate, as well as ways to pull a meaningful self-empowerment from the traditions of otherwise male-dominated cultural backgrounds. The visual metaphor of hopscotch impelled their narrative forward, featuring a protagonist who was able to overcome her past and produce a new destiny through her tenacity.

Aziz Sohail wrapped up the working group with his ongoing project entitled “In Search of Baba Singh” which, like his larger body of work, connected a decidedly queer curatorial practice with a South Asian perspective. To interrogate the long history of queer incarceration, Aziz filtered his endeavor through the life of Baba Singh, a laborer from Punjab India who emigrated to California only to be arrested for what were termed “infamous crimes against nature.” He also explored queer identity and its tenuous relationship with language in another curated series, “Is It Possible To Live Outside A Language?” Featuring artists representing a global community from Brazil to Berlin, Aziz hopes to further eliminate the ‘otherness’ that still inflicts so many queer folk everywhere, and especially in producing a decolonial framework outside of existing art institutions.

Notes taken by Katie Bruhn
Revised by Moises De La Cruz

 MORE FIELD SESSIONS