About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art in a Class of its Own

Some things you merely enjoy and there are other things you feel very fortunate having experienced.  Entering its final weeks within Wrightwood 659’s captivating galleries, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art, falls firmly in the second category.

The show, which revitalizes our appreciation of the psychological power of art and challenges us to grapple with our notions of what sexuality and sexual identity are, will not be traveling.  It ends August 10^th, eleven weeks and three days after opening.  Considering the breadth of relentless artistic beauty saturating the exhibition spaces four floors, About Face’s limited residence at Wrightwood 695 seems particularly ephemeral. That no other city will be able to experience its tremendous human uplift makes the exhibition’s approaching close even more regrettable.

Timed to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall riots when the marginalized stood together and answered subjugating force with fury; the exhibition seems to follow suite by saying no to rejection and victimization through the prisms of time and art. No one would have expected and many have forgotten that at the forefront of that rebellion stood a black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson.  Her courage and that of the thousands who came to rally behind her helped make America see the invisible.

Those are also the attributes that ultimately link the riots to the About Face exhibit.   A torrent of voices that you’d never expect to hear acknowledging their own beauty and validating their link in the chain of humanity. 

Unlike so much that commemorates Stonewall, the voices in this exhibit are rich in variety and origin.  They come from Africa and Sweden and Indonesia and all the Americas.  They represent people who have and do live their lives in harmony with what they know themselves to be.  Queer.  A word that encompasses the familiar and the freaks and accepts them all through a shared connecting thread.

A confrontation with the bold, the demanding and the exhilarating happens almost immediately with the art of Canadian born Attila Richard Lukacs.  His works have the scale and tonal resonance of the Renaissance but carry messages from the underground.  Maddeningly beautiful, provocative and serenely defiant; most of the pieces in this setting only hint at sexuality and seem more concerned with social hypocrisy and political justice. 

By the time the show ends on the fourth floor, you’ve entered a world of metaphysical heartbreak and excruciating endurance.  The About Face exhibit is broken up in four parts with this last representing transcendence.   Here, the mood changes dramatically.  The art has a spiritual grandeur; a psychic bond connecting the paintings of each artist. Some are poignant and shaded in mystery.  Many of Jerome Caja’s works are wonderfully clever, some scathingly irreverent; the perfect reflection of a mind enraged.  And one with an insight that is nothing less than a sublime gift.  The artist died at 37 and youth permeates the 120 miniatures on display.  Even when many of his pieces openly allude to death and decay, there’s no hint of the macabre.  

To get to this point was a trek though some of the most beautiful artistic terrain imaginable.  Encountering the work of each of the exhibits 43 artists was like traveling through 43 countries where the language and topography is vastly different from the place to place and infinitely fascinating everywhere. Each of the nearly 500 pieces of art can be viewed as its own story. They’re told through photography, collage, surreally transfixing dolls, painting, video imagery, and sculpture.  Together they offer startling new ways to see the world we live in and those who are making this journey through life with us.   Much of the art is unforgettable. 

Seeing how Joan E. Biren’s images of lesbian affirmation compare to the exquisite work Sophia Wallace does in obliterating conventional concepts of masculine and feminine beauty feels revelatory.  And we discover a new Harvey Milk.   The one before he was iconized as a trailblazer and martyr and was working as a photographer in San Francisco.  His photographic skills were exceptional and his images reflected the positive acceptance of self and community we associate with his life.  Looking into the mesmerizing eyes of South African Zanele Muholi’s self-portraits where she transforms herself into a sexual and cultural question mark; regally inviting open scrutiny.  Realizing the staggering range of domestic unions that exists through Leonard Suryajaya’s photographic chronicle of his life as a family centric Indonesian man living with a white partner here in Chicago.

The show’s depth and scope makes it feel like a bottomless trove of treasure.  One that you’d love to plunder over and over.  A triumph from any measure, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art is the kind of arts project that any city of consequence should and would be proud to host.  And here, the message is just as beautiful as the art.

About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art

Through August 10, 2019

Wrightwood 659

659 W. Wrightwood

Chicago, IL  60614

773-437-6601

info@wrightwood659.org

Admissions through reservations only