At Nickle Galleries, participating artists used queer art to think through visibility, chosen community, material memory and the instability of identity.
The first thing I noticed when I walked into Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary was the arrangement of the works in Creation as Conversation: in a circle, as if they were in an ongoing conversation — giving the exhibition's title a physical form.
The exhibition gathered works that treated queer art as process: something made through conversation, concealment, visibility, memory and chosen community. Nikki, one of the participating artists, said her piece Constellations did not fully take shape until the artists' first meeting stretched overtime.
"Our creation was born out of a conversation," Nikki said, she said. "I didn't have much of an idea of what was going to happen until that meeting."
Precisely, in my own conversations with the exhibition’s artists, I heard again and again descriptions of a show whose pieces were both the result of dialectic in its original sense, and also objects for further conversation, including with oneself.
Leo's Naka started as an anti-portraiture project about queer identity, hiddenness and environment. Watching the moving images projected onto the wall, a solitary viewer enters into a kind of dialogue with the work. and
"[It] creates a conversation internally," said Leo Leo said.
The Japanese text in his piece was intentionally left untranslated to evoke the secrecy that is familiar as a facet of life to many a queer person. By contrast, placing the work in a public gallery made the piece become a step toward openness."one step towards openness."
Jeremy's Rebirth drew from queer and immigrant experience, including the difficulty of making negative experiences visible without treating them as shameful. Jeremy resisted the idea that queer representation must show only survival, celebration or closure.:
"I wanted to show that even negative experiences can be beautiful," he said, "and they are part of us."
He spoke about his experience of being disowned by his family because of his identity, and how his chosen family now includes his partner and friends. He wanted the work to speak not only for himself, but for others still afraid to speak openly.
"I've been through the worst," he said, "but I'm still trying to make it, and I'm still trying to create a community that supports each other."
Valeria Something's Missing explored family, desire and the wish for approval, beginning with a memory of a photograph of her mother in her wedding dress. The piece circles around the wish to have something like that image while also wanting approval for her own version of it. Keeping the project hidden from her parents throughout, — from pamphlets brought secretly into her room to the making of her own piece — she found a chosen community through this process, including in her curators from Nickle Galleries.
Nikki's Constellations drew on celestial imagery, community and found materials connected to home. She described the piece through the metaphor of a galaxy: the people around her as stars that make her life brighter. "It doesn't have to be the community you were born into," she said. "It can be a community that you have created and curated and grown." The range of materials employed was impressive: clay, cardboard, found wood, string, beads, gifted objects and a baby blanket made by her grandmother. The string came from the same kind she uses to mend clothes; the beads came from friends or broken bracelets; the wood was found while walking in her community — their provenance reflected the piece's meaning.
Amanda’s The Absurdity of Birth added another body to the exhibition's gathering of memories, objects and propositions. In the context of the circular arrangement, her array of materials helped give the show the feeling of a room occupied by people in dialogue rather than a set of discrete works standing apart.
Gian’s A Chameleon used 3D-printed PLA silhouettes, SolidWorks and light sources to explore identity and perspective. The piece grew from the expectations Gian felt in engineering, where certain industries can make theatrical or flamboyant self-expression feel out of place. "I wanted to show that while I can be one version of myself, all the aspects of how I express myself are still part of me," Gian said.
Katie’s work explored the body, gender presentation and art history. She said she has often been asked whether she is a girl because of her short hair, androgynous presentation and deeper voice. As she grew older, that question lost some of its force. "I don't think I actually care," she said. The yarn placed near the work pointed toward textile traditions often dismissed because of their association with women, as she noted: "It's kind of 'it's craft until a man does it.'"
I asked the artists what it means to call something queer art. Gian said "queer art as a phrase definitely does exist," especially when a work describes queer experience through any medium. Katie, however, cautioned that identity labels can flatten complex work when the label becomes more visible than the art itself. "An artist's identity gets pushed forward more than their art does," she said. Valeria's answer sharpened that ambivalence: labels matter because they stand for visibility and safety, but she was not sure whether naming the space as queer made some non-queer viewers assume it was not for them. "I'm still on the fence whether that's a good or bad thing," she said. Leo noted that queer art is often already around people without being labelled as such. "It's right in front of you most of the time," he said. "It's just that we're not told straight up." Jeremy defined queer art as "very radical," pointing to the drama, sparkle and openness of queer expression.
Several artists also spoke about the need for queer spaces in Calgary that are not only bars or nightlife venues. Gian put it simply: "We don't all drink, we don't all club. A lot of us are quiet book nerds who just want to stay inside." In that sense, the exhibition's contribution was as the container for another queer space. The result is a show about art as something unfinished, in the best sense: a process that begins with a work in a gallery, and continues in the conversations it makes possible.
