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Widows' peak
'Life After Death: Embracing
the Queer Widow' at Space 743
by John R. Killacky
 For
over 20 years, we have lived among the hungry ghosts of those gone
too soon. Before we had a name for the swollen lymph nodes, malaise,
weight losses, night sweats, fevers, recurrent infections, lesions,
and rare tumors we were experiencing, we had to organize ourselves
against indifference and contempt.
At
first, anger helped us cope with the homophobia, fear, and loathing
around us, as our forlorn reality of ravaged lives and slow anguished
deaths escalated. How many nights did we gather around wasted bodies
with fluid-filled lungs gasping for breath as dementia and morphine
obfuscated any goodbyes?
From
the onset of the pandemic, we created personal works to vent our
rage while commemorating our lost ones. We made art as much for
ourselves and friends as for a broader public. In our rituals we
found community in a society that refused to recognize our mourning.
Yet
the fervor in gathering and naming of our losses is dissipating in
this third AIDS decade. How long can we grieve when there are so few
remaining to reminisce with us? Almost an entire generation of gay
men have been lost. Those of us left behind are fatigued, and the
media has moved on, but the battle is not over.
With
22 million dead and counting, the plague is still with us. We cannot
forget and we must continue telling our unfinished stories to anyone
who will listen. In one of his last speeches before his death, film
historian Vito Russo said, "Remember that someday the AIDS
crisis will be over. And when that day has come and gone, there will
be people alive on this Earth: gay people and straight people, black
people and white people, men and women, who will hear the story that
once there was a terrible disease, and that a brave group of people
stood up and fought and in some cases died so that others might live
and be free."
Artists
have always been on the front lines of the AIDS war with cultural,
social, and political agitprop work. Adding to this legacy is a new
multidisciplinary project, Life After Death: Embracing the Queer
Widow, organized by Dan Pillers in collaboration with seven other
artists. It shows at Space 743 through July 28.
The
participants began meeting last February to discuss the notion of
queer widows and why they each identify as such. The resulting work
on view is a poignant amalgam of literary, video, and visual pieces,
including Mike Richards' sculptural tableaus incorporating
photographs, Douglas Morris' gaily-painted abstract portraits, Kerry
Rutz's well-crafted paintings, and Tim Clare's heart-shaped shield
made of tin and nails.
At
the entrance we are greeted with Yves Moralex's wailing wall
constructed from Kleenex boxes. Within the gallery, he installed a
series of Canopic Boxes drawn from ancient Egyptian mummification
practices. Chuck Forester wrote a series of poems, mounted above a
drafting table with some of his late partner's drawings. Dan Pillers
incorporated dolls, dried flowers, and a widow's dress, mounted
behind glass etched with elegiac prose.
At
the center of the exhibition are two collaborative works created by
all the artists. One forms a circle with two-sided panels. On the
outside, we see expressions of external grief. When we enter inside,
we witness their unresolved emotions. Here visitors can share their
thoughts on blank postcards as part of Jim Cross' sewn panel.
The
other collaborative piece is a mementos case of objects from the
artists' deceased partners, which contains great sentimental value.
Within is a poem by Cross, with a line which best sums up the queer
widows' project: "Being granted no rituals in which to grieve,
we struggled to find our own way."
Life
After Death: Embracing the Queer Widow runs through July 28 at Space
743, 743 Harrison St. Gallery hours are Wed.-Sat., 12-5 p.m.
John R.
Killacky, "Widow's Peak: 'Life After Death: Embracing the Queer
Widow' at Space 743",
THE BAY AREA REPORTER, Vol.31 #25,
6/21/2001, p 84. |
