Coloring Outside the Lines: Visual Art as a Form of Care for the LGBTQ+ Community
by Adrian Hackney
Keywords: visual art, community, LGBTQ+, intersectionality
My community care project centers around the queer and trans community, and more specifically how visual art serves as a mode of connection and empowerment for its members. To better understand this topic, I have collaborated with staff members at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) in Provincetown, Massachusetts to support them in any way possible during the complex times of COVID-19. PAAM is home to countless artists and non-artists, many of whom are members of the LGBTQ+ community. As a crucial center of creativity and community for people from marginalized backgrounds, PAAM employs a variety of forms of care to serve these people, some of which I have worked to support. Through events that range from exhibitions to classes, PAAM has created a community rooted in caregiving through art that now extends across the nation and even around the globe.
A place like PAAM, and visual art in general, may not immediately come to mind when one considers methods of caregiving. However, I have experienced firsthand the individual and communal power that art can generate and hope to show this potential through my section of the syllabus. Art offers an incomparable opportunity for self-expression that, when shared, evolves into a profound sense of togetherness, particularly along the margins of society. It has the unique ability to nurture fulfillment within both the creator and viewer to provide a form of spiritual healing that transcends the physical work. Due to the transformative potential of art, care can be shown through acts that range from the orchestration of an exhibition to the creation of a sculpture. Such caregiving holds increased significance when performed amongst queer and trans people, and especially queer and trans people at other intersections of identity, who face an even broader range of oppressive power structures. The potential for mutual empowerment through care relates closely to the themes of Care in Critical Times, from community to resistance. More specifically, the course has underscored the increased significance of care amongst marginalized people, for a plethora of reasons that range from social to political to economic. The more intense and varied forms of oppression grow, the more radical and transformative care becomes. Therefore, art facilitates a unique form of care that promotes empowerment across all identities, but especially queer and trans ones. The materials in my section of the syllabus aim to unveil the intricacies of caregiving through art for the LGBTQ+ community by illuminating a broad range of experience. The readings range from reflections of queer artists of color to studies about art as a form of therapy for queer people to actual exhibitions of queer art centered around care. They all underscore how art allows queer and trans peoeple to care not only for one another through the establishment of community, but also for themselves as a practice of healing. Each narrative adds another dimension to the significance of art as care and resistance for queer and trans people, at places like PAAM and beyond.
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