Exhibit Spotlight: Our Voices
By: Ashley Jiang, Sophia Turner, Leo Zhang
On the evening of April 1, community members celebrated queer student Our Voices, An Artistic Exploration of Queerness. The event, facilitated by seniors Allison Kim and Jaden Sides, exhibited various forms of art created by students in the winter term Core Values Project (CVP) “Supporting Queer Students 101.”
“I wanted to host this performance to showcase the art that people worked on during our CVP block, especially art that might explore their identity,” Kim said. “Jaden and I specifically wanted to create queer spaces and make spaces on campus more accessible and safer for students–[for example,] places like the Academy Building that might seem very academic and cold,” Kim continued.
Sides agreed. “The ideas, both issues facing the queer community and representations of queer joy, are very everyday things. But queerness is often showcased in a very rigid sense, and only in moments of widespread pain or violence or tragedy, even though that’s a fraction of what we experience, and we wanted to show that more common, subtle, and subjective component.”
Student Activities Coordinator Joanne Lembo shared her goal for the event. “For me, the goal of the show was to give the opportunity to our amazing queer students to express themselves and to show the community how awesome they are,” Lembo said.
“I also hope that audiences left with a fuller sense of queer identity - that those unfamiliar with the community were able to see queerness existing in a more abstract sense than simply being attracted to the same gender or with a non-cisgender identity,” Sides shared.
Kim expressed her appreciation for Lembo’s support in executing the event. “Ms. Lembo was super helpful with [the event]. She got us the venue and made sure to reserve the time. She also helped us get a lot of good food for the event itself and all the materials that we need to put up the art,” Kim said. “All we really had to do was say what exactly we wanted to do.”
For CVP members, the event was a chance to explore and express their identities. “[The CVP] felt like a good environment to choose the sort of art that I wanted to represent,” senior Alana Reale said. “[The event] was titled exploration of queerness, [and] I think a lot of people went in with that at the forefront and very explicitly included like that type of content, but for me, it was more of a good chance to express myself.”
Reale performed a cover of “Bug Collector” by Haley Heynderickx. “It's definitely one of my favorite songs, and I also liked the aspect of queerness. The artist is a pretty small artist. She's [queer], and the message of the song is about soothing someone's anxieties or supporting someone I guess,” Reale said. “It just feels clear to me, even though it wasn't explicit.”
For lower Katelyn Cui, recent events inspired their artwork. “With all the bad news and tough situations that we face in our school community and the larger world, I really wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate happiness. Art can be a strong representation of emotion and I wanted to express joy and hope as an act of resistance,” Cui said.
Upper Chloe Becker shared their creative process. “I was trying to incorporate body dysmorphia into the piece, so I started drawing a face. I didn't really like how it looked and I thought, that's actually perfect,” Becker said. “Then I felt like I wouldn't really get the point across with just images because body dysmorphia comes with these internal thoughts that are really damaging to your psyche,” Becker said. “I wanted to show that process of thinking and how you can overcome that.”
Becker continued: “So, I started to write down my intrusive thoughts with pencil, and then I went over it with paint markers. Then I started drawing sketches over top of those, like flowers that I doodle in class or sketches of people or just bigger, bold words that drowned out those intrusive thoughts. I just wanted to show this process of trying to be okay with who you are and what you look like.”
Facilitators tackled the obstacle of time by creating asynchronous CVP meetings. “The hardest part was just making sure that everyone who wanted to do something, got to do it and would finish on time,” Kim said. “I think when you're trying to control a bunch of Exonians, it can be hard, especially when the project is under CVP and not under a class for a grade.”
“Something I appreciated about this CVP was the kind of freedom that it offered because most of our meetings were asynchronous,” Reale added. “The leaders of the workshop mostly just gave us time to work on our pieces and prepare, with occasional check-ins on progress. That was helpful, and I never felt like I was pressed for time or anything.”
CVP members also appreciated the freedom of expression that art provided. “I really love these opportunities to just create art, because it's not focused on the end result. It's mostly a way to get students to actually stop and create something and think about themselves and deal with their emotions in a healthy way other than consuming large amounts of caffeine,” Becker said.
“I liked the self-directed process of creating a piece that spoke to me, using a medium of my choice. I appreciate the great independence of artistic expression—the only person who can understand and realize your vision is you.” upper Aletheia Zou agreed.
Looking to the future, Kim shared her vision for the long-term goals of the CVP. “We are going to try to aim for a more permanent exhibit or project and try to have it be more individual. The final project will be decided by each person who's doing it rather than have it all be a final performance.”
