Resisting Erasure is the theme of the third annual LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project exhibition which held its opening reception April 25 at Center on Addison in Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood.
Founded in the Summer of 2019, the LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project is a partnership between Center on Halsted, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Chicago.
The project has had over 160 racially-, socioeconomically- and gender-diverse elders ages 60+ and college aged youth participants. To date, over 140 bi-weekly themed dialogues have taken place. The dialogues and collaborative artwork projects’ goals have been to foster deep and long-term interactions among the participants.
This year’s exhibition featured eight works of art from 14 youth and 14 elder participants who traveled to Gerber/Hart Library and Archives to gain inspiration for their projects—Always Here, Always Will Be; Love, Laughter and Loss; Spread It!/Queers Spread This!; Outside of the Box: Finding Our True Selves; A Pause in the Continuum of Queer History (The Gay Agenda); Meet the Pansies Episode #1: What’s In Your Closet?; Resist! Fight Back! A March Across Time and The View From Here.
Additionally, the co-facilitators created a Reading Room that featured couches, and a table filled with LGBTQ+ focused books.
LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project Facilitator Team Members Phyllis Johnson and Danie Muriello welcomed the packed house. Johnson said that this most recent cohort of youth and older adults started their journey with each other this past September. She invited everyone to engage with those who were wearing stickers that look like blue award ribbons to find out more about the project and this exhibition.
Muriello said that each artistic team began “exploring the role of art in LGBTQ+ lives and movements … Through this collaborative community-engaged process, we are looking for our erased histories and listening to them. In a political moment where we are witnessing renewed unabashed transphobic and homophobic legislation, we as an engaged community of queer artists, activists and scholars draw on our collaborative artistic practices to remind everyone that we’ve been here, we’ve always been here, and we refuse attempts to erase us. This exhibition is a call to action and an invitation to join us in this work.”
Storytellers and exhibition participants Ray Coffman, Bailey Taylor, Lizzie Maricichand George Gomez wowed the audience with their unique narratives.
Coffman’s story focused on the thousands of racist incidents that have happened to him within the LGBTQ+ community in his 76 years on this planet. He said this happened when he went to bars solo and was asked to produce two forms of ID whereas when he went with a white friend he was “ushered in with a smile.” Coffman said he heard terms like “you Blacks” or the N-word. He shared three specific experiences—twice when he traveled to Amsterdam in 1971 and once at a gay professional social mixer at a bar in what was then called Boystown in the ‘90s when he was an enterprise data architecture technology manager at the Sears Headquarters IT department. Coffman’s message to everyone is that they should know the content of people’s character, not just the cover of the book of their life story or what their critics say.
Taylor, who is trans, said she is lucky to have a queer elder family member, her “stone cold butch lesbian Aunt named Brenda,” in her life, and was glad her work allowed for a deeper dialogue with her aunt. The two co-wrote a letter to their queer descendants that they put in their family bible; it included references to the then-impending “second Trump Presidency, and detailed how Taylor, now 26, and her 69-year-old aunt both came out and were fighters for LGBTQ+ rights.
Maricich’sstory started in 1973 when she had just graduated from high school and got a job at the US Steel South Works plant in South Chicago where she met the extremely confident Miss Tina. She spoke about the first time they had a conversation at work and how even though it was awkward.
“I found myself drawn to her spirit and her openness,” Maricich said, adding, “You see, Miss Tina was the first transgender woman I ever met.” Maricich was “afraid of being found out because deep down, I knew for the longest time that I, too, was transgender.” Maricich’s memories of Miss Tina still linger, and she regrets never telling her that she is also transgender, she said.
Gomez’s tome had an explicit sexual language and sexual references mature content warning. He spoke about first meeting Jordan “well after midnight under the fractured, shimmering rays of a disco ball” and how that led to them dancing and locking lips that night, and then text messages in the ensuing days. Gomez related their first sexual encounter one night at his apartment and that “this was not a love story, but queer joy, and fucking, can feel a lot like love at 4:16 a.m.”
This free exhibit is open to the public from 9 a.m.—2:30 p.m. on April 26 and 29 and May 1 and 3. LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project members will be offering tours during those hours and dates.
Spread It!-Queers Spread This! exhibit. Always Here, Always Will Be exhibit. Outside of the Box- Finding Our True Selves exhibit. Reading Room exhibit. Tee-shirts on sale to benefit the program. Resist! Fight Back! A March Across Time exhibit. Photos by Carrie Maxwell