#queer potentials

WEEK 11 – ANIMATING SEXUALITY

QUEER POTENTIALS IN COLLAGE

When examining image-based appropriated art works, in the form of two-dimensional collage, found or constructed sculptural work, manipulated GIFs and commercially sourced mash-up videos, a collection of queer potentials begin to arise. I would like to specifically discuss to the work of Toronto-based artist, Maggie Groat, and her exhibition at ESP Gallery this past fall entitled Other Visions & Tools for Alternatives. The exhibition, which uses various forms of appropriation, Groat activates everyday image signifiers and recontextualizes them to create alternative modes of understanding. Working with ecological and edicationssource materials, Groat begins a conversation about the hierarchy of science studies and subverts binary ideas of “high science” and “low science.” By reframing and re-presenting mass produced and culturally specific symbols into diversified, fluid readings, Groat is engaging in a “queering” of these practices. One work in particular, Circles for Alternatives, is a collage piece featuring two square cut outs side by side; a moon and a cabbage. The sourced images are affixed to a 16x20 matte board and presented in a neutral pine frame reminiscent of a vitrine to display and study insects. The images present two approaches to science, with inherently gendered identities. The cabbage, shown neatly planted in a manicured garden, is bound to the “female” sciences; aesthetic and sustenance-giving “low brow” home horticulture, an enduring gendered fragment of the “hunter and gatherer” essentialist binary. The moon, though spiritually and mythically connected to a feminine identity is decidedly masculinized by the scholastic appearance of the image (perhaps sourced from a scientific text) and the sterile environment which it is presented (square cut, sparse frame, symmetrical diptych). By presenting the two images side by side, Groat is interrelating the two images – facilitating the opportunity for a more academically-respected viewing of the gardened cabbage and a ecological reading of the moon and space studies. The reconfigurations Groat enacts throughout  Other Visions & Tools for Alternatives allow for gender stereotypes and other cultural norms associated with science and ecological studies to be subverted, shifted and queered and provide bizarre, outlandish and unexpected readings of stagnant signifiers.

More on the exhibition: http://www.erinstumpprojects.com/13-09-groat/groat.html#