Welcome to Queer Ecologies, we’re glad you’re here!

For this exhibition we wanted to push ourselves to think differently, to experiment, to expand – not just into what’s possible, but what is needed This is how Queer Ecologies, a collaborative, multimedia exhibition between the William Way LGBT Community Center and Bartram’s Garden – a first of its kind – came to be.

With Queer Ecologies, we seek to explore our relationship to nature as a queer community – how are we inspired by, engaging with, and, perhaps most importantly, understanding ourselves as part of nature? And how are we, in turn, leveraging our experiences to provide unique solutions to the social and environmental challenges we’re facing?

Through different approaches and showcasing a wide range of topics related to the concept of Queer Ecology, the 22 artists in this exhibition open up a series of windows that allow us to glance into alternative realities:

Some play with the ways in which we understand ourselves as one with nature- not in conflict with, but fluid and ever expanding. As some of the artists would put it, finding a topographic intimacy that links us to our home, both flesh and the planet.

Others explore how intersectional communities already act as microcosms where joy, beauty, and love are interlinked to the survival and liberation of all beings; or communities in which creation goes back to its purest form as an act of creativity, subversion, and protest – not consumption. Defying the same systems that prevent us from meaningfully connecting with ourselves, others, and nature; as Mexican author and educator Dr. Cesar A Cruz sees his own role, art too should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Ultimately we hope this exhibition supports an expanded understanding of Queer Ecology not just as a hopeful flight of fancy, but a sensible, human-centered, and pragmatic approach to what our world could be.

Thank you to each of the artists for your beautiful and thought-provoking work, to the Arts Committee members at William Way, and the team at Bartram’s Garden, for your generous time and dedication to this project. Please join us at both venues to explore the full exhibition.

For more details go to https://www.waygay.org/galleries

In community,
Irving Xchel Chan Gomez, Alec Rogers & Shanna Mitchell,
curators