In Witness at Texas Tech’s Landmark Gallery, moments of queer experience are abstracted into a major vibe by sixty-four BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists.
Witness
November 18, 2021–February 27, 2022
Landmark Gallery, Texas Tech University School of Art, Lubbock
Witness begins with a cosmological view: a shot of the stars by Meagan Marsh Pine. What happens after is a kind of unfolding, image by image, of a complicated, often surprising sequence of photographs that alternately take a wide view and zoom into the grain of existence.
As a collection of images, Witness is also a book, so this unfolding comes naturally. Except for a few exceptions on account of the limitations of the physical space of the gallery, the exhibition at the Texas Tech School of Art follows the sequence of the book, which features sixty-four BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists. The images range widely, and wildly, offering different outlooks on identity and marginalization, from an aerial view of a rural highway interchange to a closeup of glue flaking off of a hand.
Bodies—interrupted by shadows, doorways, windows, waves, and the frame of the camera—are troubled, yet exhibit a forthcoming sensuousness. There are moments of glee, affirmation, defiance, artifice, authenticity, and seduction. Moments of queer experience abstracted into images that are a mood—a vibe. A hotel room interior window looking onto an atrium filled with empty chairs and tables. A distant deer in a dark suburban backyard, illuminated by a flash. A rainbow visible over a dark forest outside a stark white room. A house on fire.
The curator, New York-based Efrem Zelony-Mindell, put together Witness from an open call for photography addressing “queerness outside of major city mentalities.” What is on view here could be seen as a continuation of one of their previous projects, a book of abstract photography entitled n e w f l e s h (2019) that looked at “queerness beyond the body.” But in contrast to much of the conceptual, composite slickness of n e w f l e s h, Witness seems to capture more of an embodied, authentic, lived experience. After the flashpoints of the murder of George Floyd and the continuing COVID-19 crisis that have revealed the searing inequities and everyday marginalizations latent in United States society, these photographs gain new urgency.
At a university gallery in a conservative city in Texas, no less, images, concepts, and representations like these matter. As an adjunct professor teaching art appreciation to non-majors at Texas Tech, I was on the receiving end of some of my students’ reactions to this show. It’s hard to tell how much of it sinks in or what it might change, but exposure makes a difference. (Disclosure: my husband is a photo faculty member at Texas Tech.)
There is one image that interrupts the sequence of the exhibition and appears on a wall by itself: Untitled (2019) by Carter Sturgeon, from the series Please Give Me Room (to exist). It’s a snapshot of who I assume is the artist, affixed to a background of green grass; they are seated on the floor of an ordinary room cluttered with laundry baskets and other everyday items, elbows propped on their knees. A non-binary artist from Cincinnati, their gaze speaks volumes—confronting the camera with a look that is at once direct, beseeching, and fatigued. Give them space, those eyes plead, to grow, to exist, to be who they are, to be who they are becoming. As the excellent afterword for Witness, written by Kelcey Sucena, states, “You are beautiful for being exactly what you are.”
The book, self-published by Zelony-Mindell, is already sold out but can be viewed in its entirety online.
Witness is scheduled to hang through February 27, 2022, at the Landmark Gallery, Texas Tech University School of Art, 3010 18th Street in Lubbock.
