Queer Heterotopias: Summer 2021 exhibition

Brighton is a queer heterotopia – and we are celebrating it. The Ledward Centre's summer exhibition, produced by The Socially Engaged Art Salon [SEAS] in collaboration with the New York Centre for LGBTQ+ and the Preus Museum (Norway).

Duke Mound, Brighton's Palace Pier, the Marina, Brighton Sauna, Black Rock place, Portslade Basin Road Local Wildlife site and its naturist beach, Brighton Pavilion, the Pride parade, your home during the lockdown and sometimes your body… all these are heterotopias – places that are outside the norm, that are strange or in other words queer. In fact, the exhibition's curator Gil Mualem-Doron argues that: "Brighton, as a holiday seaside town where non-normative and even transgressive behaviour is rife, can be seen as a heterotopian city. As such, it has attracted throughout history the LGBT community and it is no wonder that it became the UK’s LGBTQ capital".

The exhibition includes photography, painting and films by twenty five local and international artists. The works explore the multiplicity of queer spaces, which include a photography project at Brighton Palace Pier with drag artist Istvan; documentation of gay cruising at the delapitating New York pier in the 80’s by the celebrated photographer Leonard Fink; the first cross dressing selfies taken at the end of the 19th century by the queer photographers duo Bolette Berg & Marie Hoeg in Norway, a cenzored tourist promo film to Gay Athens by the Greek porn director Meneles, films about queer Muslim spaces by Abdullah Qureshi and Mustafa Boga, a five year participatory photography project with Mexico’s their gender community - the Muxes by Nelson Morales, a subversive re-creation of John Lennon and Yoko Ono "Bed-ins for Peace" project by Hanneke Wetzer, embroidery work depicting sex on London's underground by Annis Harrison and a special commison by SEAS of the local artist Beth Easton to re-draw Brighton as a queer planet.

The exhibition is supported by The Rainbow Trust, Art Council England and Sussex Community Foundation.

For the opportunity to exhibit at SEAS's next 'Queer Photography' show please go to: https://www.curatorspace.com/opportunities/detail/queer-photography-exhibition--a-zine/5704

Participant artists in Queer Heterotopias: 

Abdullah Qureshi
Annis Harrison
Berg & Hoeg
Beth Easton
Campbell X
CJ Reay
Claudia Sneddon & Joe Morris
Eleanor Louise West
Emilie Christine P. Newman
Gil Mualem-Doron
Hanneke Wetzer
Helen Grundy
Jose Gomez
Leonard Fink
Leonie Bellini
Menelas
Mustafa Boğa
Nelson Morales
Nomusa Musa Mtshali
Ophelia Alldaye
Queeruption
Stiofan O'Ceallaigh
Tate Anderson
Youcef Hadjazi

Exhibition runs from 8th August 2021 to 1st October in The Ledward Centre and online at https://www.seasbrighton.org/queer-heterotopias

Image credit: IG @gil_mualem_doron

 

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