(Volume II: Paris)
(Volume I: Berlin)
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but as the clouds descended on us, I could see you (2023)
Available at Printed Matter, selected for the Decolonization, Resistance, and Interconnected Solidarity table
Available for a limited time at ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
Winner of the Van Dewater Award, Skidmore College Schick Gallery Juried Student Exhibition 2024
46 p., 9” x 6”, staple bound, ink jet printed
A collection of quotes found on the website Queering the Map from locations where same-sex relations are criminalized. These voices, shown beside the corresponding national laws against them, display how queer love and heartbreak manifest tenderly in places whose politics deny it while acknowledging degrees of privilege within queer identities through the author’s voice.
Afterward:
Available at Printed Matter, selected for the Decolonization, Resistance, and Interconnected Solidarity table
Available for a limited time at ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
Winner of the Van Dewater Award, Skidmore College Schick Gallery Juried Student Exhibition 2024
46 p., 9” x 6”, staple bound, ink jet printed
A collection of quotes found on the website Queering the Map from locations where same-sex relations are criminalized. These voices, shown beside the corresponding national laws against them, display how queer love and heartbreak manifest tenderly in places whose politics deny it while acknowledging degrees of privilege within queer identities through the author’s voice.
Afterward:
As of the publication of this zine, same-sex relations between are criminalized consenting adults in at least 67 countries. All of the information on these national laws included in this zine is sourced from the Human Rights Watch. I was inspired to compile this data because although I may share an identity with the people whose quotes I've included, the pin on the map I hail from has ensured that I have never once felt marginalized. This zine is a product of a search to empathize with those who were not born into the privilege I have, a tangible way to recognize their voices.
The website Queering the Map was developed by the artist and designer Lucas Larochelle in 2017 with the intention of providing an interface that collaboratively "archives the cartography of queer memory," according to their site's description. Anyone with access to the internet can use the site to drop a pin with a caption wherever they may be. I sorted through dozens of these entries in many of the countries where same-sex relations are criminalized and compiled some of the most poignant and heartfelt quotes with the intention of establishing a poetic sense of what it looks and feels like to be queer in these countries. I used Google Earth to find imagery of where these shared memories were experienced. Some of the photos include the white forward-backward arrows the map interface has for users to move throughout their digital world. This acts asa reminder that we, as readers, are not looking at photographs of beautiful cityscapes and mountain ranges. We are looking at photos taken of a website on a computer screen. We are physically separated from these places, and therefore separate from the conditions that come with them.
Though the quotes included here are independent from me, it is my voice that has curated them. I wanted to acknowledge the subjectivity of selecting 20 quotes out of hundreds; I am telling a highly specific story through this collection. I have left out quotes on homophobia and notes of encouragement, choosing instead an assortment that conveys a story that I wish to tell: that queer love and heartbreak manifest tenderly, far from the Western privilege I and so many others are accustomed to. To address this inherent subjectivity, I chose to include my own photographs of my hometown in Upstate New York. Though comparatively, this region is a highly privileged place
to grow up in, it is politically conservative. I wanted to visually represent how queerness exists in environments whose politics deny it. I photographed my local landscape, using nature as a representation of the beauty and resilience of queer love that endures on land that is dominated by conservative societal policy. The branches and leaves show how nature, and queerness, demand a space and will continue to grow.
The font used in this zine was developed for the font library Bye Bye Binary, whose fonts include the Queer Unicode Initiative (QUNI) to encode inclusive glyphs for French typography. In the French language, noun and verb endings are gendered. QUNI fonts are encoded to allow automatic replacement of these gendered endings with inclusive and non-binary ligatures. Though this zine is in English, many of the countries where same-sex relations are criminalized speak French. This is a direct result of colonialism. Many of these countries have histories of same-sex relations embedded within their cultures before being colonized by Europe. By using a font that actively queers a colonist language, this zine further addresses the role of the West in the criminalization of same-sex relations today.
My hope is that as you hold this zine in your hands, as you turn the pages with your fingers and gaze upon the text with your eyes, you hear these voices. These voices are attached to people who have breathed themselves into messages that if discovered could place a target over their heads. Hear these voices and acknowledge them, with a solidarity that recognizes your own place of privilege, but also the undeniable and irrepressible sameness that we all share.
The website Queering the Map was developed by the artist and designer Lucas Larochelle in 2017 with the intention of providing an interface that collaboratively "archives the cartography of queer memory," according to their site's description. Anyone with access to the internet can use the site to drop a pin with a caption wherever they may be. I sorted through dozens of these entries in many of the countries where same-sex relations are criminalized and compiled some of the most poignant and heartfelt quotes with the intention of establishing a poetic sense of what it looks and feels like to be queer in these countries. I used Google Earth to find imagery of where these shared memories were experienced. Some of the photos include the white forward-backward arrows the map interface has for users to move throughout their digital world. This acts asa reminder that we, as readers, are not looking at photographs of beautiful cityscapes and mountain ranges. We are looking at photos taken of a website on a computer screen. We are physically separated from these places, and therefore separate from the conditions that come with them.
Though the quotes included here are independent from me, it is my voice that has curated them. I wanted to acknowledge the subjectivity of selecting 20 quotes out of hundreds; I am telling a highly specific story through this collection. I have left out quotes on homophobia and notes of encouragement, choosing instead an assortment that conveys a story that I wish to tell: that queer love and heartbreak manifest tenderly, far from the Western privilege I and so many others are accustomed to. To address this inherent subjectivity, I chose to include my own photographs of my hometown in Upstate New York. Though comparatively, this region is a highly privileged place
to grow up in, it is politically conservative. I wanted to visually represent how queerness exists in environments whose politics deny it. I photographed my local landscape, using nature as a representation of the beauty and resilience of queer love that endures on land that is dominated by conservative societal policy. The branches and leaves show how nature, and queerness, demand a space and will continue to grow.
The font used in this zine was developed for the font library Bye Bye Binary, whose fonts include the Queer Unicode Initiative (QUNI) to encode inclusive glyphs for French typography. In the French language, noun and verb endings are gendered. QUNI fonts are encoded to allow automatic replacement of these gendered endings with inclusive and non-binary ligatures. Though this zine is in English, many of the countries where same-sex relations are criminalized speak French. This is a direct result of colonialism. Many of these countries have histories of same-sex relations embedded within their cultures before being colonized by Europe. By using a font that actively queers a colonist language, this zine further addresses the role of the West in the criminalization of same-sex relations today.
My hope is that as you hold this zine in your hands, as you turn the pages with your fingers and gaze upon the text with your eyes, you hear these voices. These voices are attached to people who have breathed themselves into messages that if discovered could place a target over their heads. Hear these voices and acknowledge them, with a solidarity that recognizes your own place of privilege, but also the undeniable and irrepressible sameness that we all share.