“Queer Love,” a new multidisciplinary art exhibit comprised of photography, video installations, paintings, and sculptures created by local LGBTQ artists, celebrates queer relationships and affirms the need for connection and representation. Contributing artists span generations, nationalities, races, and gender and sexual identification, including queer, non-binary, and trans.
Co-curated by Nik Harris and G Wright, the exhibit intentionally centralizes images and works of queer women, a segment of the LGBTQ population that historically has lacked representation. The exhibit’s theme emerged from Harris’ and Wright’s reflections on their own struggles to come out, obtain acceptance, and find love.
“Growing up Black and queer in the Deep South is hard. I know how important it was to see my dreams of love physically manifested. This project is the completion of a promise to my younger self. That if I survived, I would thrive and make this world better for people like me,” Harris said.
Echoing Harris, Wright shares, “Growing up as a masculine presenting Jamaican, I did not see a reflection of myself. It’s hard to be what you cannot see. Our Queer Love exhibition creates a space for amplifying our work, our imagery, and our stories.”
Visionary leaders, Harris and Wright are also the co-founders of the exhibit’s respective presenting and producing entities, Thou Art Woman (TAW) and Black LGBTQ+ Liberation, Inc. (BLINC). TAW is an event series established in 2014 to uplift LGBTQ+ women and allies through visual and performing arts events, often with community partners, such as TransInclusive Group, Thinking Cap Theatre, and Brevo Theatre.
The more recently founded nonprofit, BLINC, helps BIPOC LGBTQ+ people lead happier and healthier lives through the arts, health and wellness programs, and strategic community partnerships. Through these affiliated organizations, Harris and Wright, create spaces to unite and amplify queer voices, a platform they prize that much more given the latest legislative efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights.
The “Queer Love” exhibit also represents a countermeasure to the Stop W.O.K.E Act, which colludes with anti-LGBTQ legislation to impact doubly the black queer community. Wright asserts, “We refuse to be erased as Black people and as queer people.”
The exhibit’s anchor, the “Black Queer Love" project, features photographs and video interviews of queer couples. Denise Royal and Tony Brown of Royal Brown Photography conducted and documented the interviews that so powerfully capture participants’ vulnerability and humanity.
The exhibition can be viewed on Monday evenings from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. through Aug. 31 and by appointment at
