Dirtstar

“Take Root”

Curated by: Caitlin Sweet of Dirtstar

Dirt Star

We are trash. As queers, marginalized people, refugees, shape shifters, outcasts; as, essentially, œthe other, we have a long-cherished tradition of living on the fringes and surviving off the metaphorical and actual castoffs of this heterosexist, racist, classist, sexist, ableist culture, a culture seeped in destruction and oppression. As gay failures, fierce and fiercely proud of our resistance to assimilationist politics, we get to pick and choose what we carry on with us and who we call family. We get to create new ways of being in this world and with each other as we unlearn, unpack, and heal from the dominant culture. This is the magic of radical queer existence.

In the tradition of camp, of taking an image, a performance, imagery from the mainstream and twisting, recoding, transforming it to make it serve a new queer purpose, Take Root is a visual art show centered on queer found object art. What have you dug out of the trash, picked up off the street, stolen, what tradition, family story have you retold to reveal the true meanings? This show is about honoring the lived experience of queers, honoring our process of having to shift through the detritus of this culture to find ourselves, our herstories, our culture, and each other. This is a show about how we sustain ourselves, our culture, our aesthetic, our spirituality, and the world around us. The work showcased will consist of artwork that utilizes found objects, re/appropriated imagery, and recontextualized traditions, in the process revealing the way that this work pushes queer culture and art forward. This show is about the space that happens after survival, how we grow roots into the land and spread like the beautiful weeds we are.

Featured Artists:

Ector Garcia
Jen Lorang
Ariel Springfield
Gabby Miller
Jamie Q
Levon Fox
Adee Roberson
Flo McGarrell
Ivy McClelland
Coral Short
Sarah Biscarra-Dilley

Micah Bazant

Lewis Wallace

Dinah Dinova

Lee Balan

Allyson Mitchell

Siobhan Flood

In conjunction with Queer Arts Festival 2011