Queer|Art’s Programs & Operations Assistant Dani Brito recently co-organized a presentation and workshop for a group of students in New Jersey who were interested to learn more about the historic intersection of art and activism in queer community. They were joined by greer x, QA’s Community Resource Coordinator, and artist / QA Board member Lola Flash.
This September, student leaders of The Franklin Township Youth Council reached out to Queer|Art about an opportunity to collaborate on their upcoming program: Colors of the World. Situated in Franklin Township, New Jersey, the Youth Council is a volunteer-based organization staffed and governed by middle and high school age youth, who program community events and advance charitable projects within distinct subcommittees. Colors of The World was imagined by the Youth Council as an ongoing series of presentations platforming the art historical legacies of marginalized communities globally. When members of the Youth Council asked Queer|Art to participate in the inaugural lecture of the series, I was flattered to learn that Queer|Art’s mission of foregrounding the perspectives of LGBTQ+ art and artists had reached teens across the Hudson River.
We proposed to center our presentation for Colors of the World on the intersection of arts and organizing within the queer community. Artists, organizers, and educators, the queer activists of the late 20th century at the forefront of coalitions like ACT UP, (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and the Combahee River Collective laid the foundation for contemporary resource redistribution practices and knowledge sharing strategies used within organizing circles today. In today’s political climate that is plagued with uncertainty and tumult, it feels especially necessary that we uplift these legacies.
Still from ‘Like a Prayer’ produced by DIVA-TV in collaboration with WHAM!
greer x, Queer|Art’s Community Resources Coordinator, and I kicked off the program with a screening of a segment from “Like a Prayer,” a documentary produced by the ACT UP affiliated video collective, DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists), which documented public testimonies and community activism in support of the fight against AIDS throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. The segment featured critical documentation of the momentous action held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on December 10th, 1989, when hundreds of members of ACT UP and WHAM! (Women’s Health Action and Mobilization), disrupted a Mass led by Cardinal John O’Connor, who adamantly opposed teaching safer sex practices in the New York City public school system. A dedicated organizer in this pivotal moment in queer history, Queer|Art Board Member and Visual Art Mentor, Lola Flash, appears in the beginning of the film alongside a group of organizers outside of the cathedral, being carried away by the NYPD.
Eager to hear a bit more about this critical moment in queer history, we asked Lola Flash to join us and share her work with ACT UP throughout the ‘90s and how it impacted her art practice at the time. Lola imparted words of wisdom from this era and more. Detailing pivotal moments in her upbringing and young adulthood––from her youth in Montclair, New Jersey, to attending Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in the late ‘70s, to finding community in New York City in the ‘80s––Lola Flash showed us through images, anecdotes, and captivating storytelling that 'the personal is political.’
It is no surprise that the students of Franklin Township were replete with questions for Lola that day, which happened to fall on the Saturday when news outlets announced that Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump in the race for the Presidential election. Asking for advice on ways to channel past organizing legacies in the fight against police brutality, mass incarceration, and for the Black Lives Matter movement at large, the teens from Franklin Township, New Jersey were ready to put Lola’s paramount insight to the test.
After a brief presentation led by myself and greer x which spotlit some of our favorite protest artworks and actions in the past decade, we asked that students take a crack at making their own protest art and to send these works over once completed, closing out the program with a show n’ tell of their creations. Within moments, my inbox was flooded with dozens of thoughtful works produced by the students of Franklin Township, summoning critical ideas around the importance of love and community, denouncing racial injustice, demanding attention to our ever-changing climate, and reiterating support for the fight against the over-policing of Black lives. As we work to build communities and structures we want to see as artists, organizers, and arts administrators, it is vital that we carve these spaces for youth to conjure beside us.