Tate – Messages of hope, love and survival
QUEERATE TATE
Discover Queerate Tate, the new digital exhibition co-curated by members of the LGBTQIA+ community from all over the world.
The public were invited to share their responses to an artwork in Tate’s collection, looked at through a queer lens. This final selection of 20 works has been chosen by public vote, sweeping across three centuries and a variety of mediums.
‘Queerate Tate is filled with messages of hope, love and survival that offer strength to us all in these most extraordinary times.’ (E-J Scott, Curator, Museum of Transology)
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‘This idealised painting by Italian artist Agostino Brunias of life in the West Indies under colonial rule, can be reappropriated to see Black joy in the face of adversity. You can almost smell the Caribbean Sea and hear the laughter and voices of Black women supporting each other.
Community is vital to those of us living at the intersection of Black and queer life. Long before LGBTIQ+ people could live outside the shadows, clubs and bars were where we found our chosen family. It’s said that movement is a language within itself, so when LGBTIQ+ Black people get together to party, our bodies move and communicate in ways that are unspoken, yet we all understand.
When we dance, we can forget our worries, our stresses, our hardships. We can leave everything out on that dance floor: sharing a collective understanding that Black queer and trans people are lit!’
Queerated by Kei Bennett, Founder of AZ Magazine, an online publication dedicated to elevating the voices of LGBTQ+ Black people and people of colour.
ID Crisis 2003 Zanele Muholi born 1972 Purchased with funds provided by Wendy Fisher 2015 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P81289
‘ID Crisis provides us with an intimate glance into the private recesses of LGBTIQ+ life in South Africa. Explorations of the black trans/queer body are often fetishistic, with the subjects performing their sexuality and pain for the white gaze.
Muholi’s series demands a new narrative, where Black LGBTIQ+ community members are the masters of their own intimate truths. The sitters are exposed, yet maintain their dignity. The activist-artist navigates the subject with a sensitivity and understanding that can only exist within projects conceived and produced by members of our own community.’
Queerated by QTIPoC Narratives Collective, a Brighton-based grassroots group creating a safe, alternative mental health space for Queer, Trans, Intersex People of Colour.
Bashasha (left) and a friend. Studio Shehrazade, Saida, Lebanon, late 1950s. Hashem el Madani 2007 Akram Zaatari born 1966 Presented by Tate International Council 2008 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P79493]
‘When I found this photo I saved it with the notes ‘Women kissing!’. I believe it is the only image like this in Tate’s collection. Honestly, it’s not a great kiss – pursed lips, eyes open. Maybe they’re just ‘friends’ (as historians would say – wow, two lifelong best friends who shared a bed and exchanged love letters etc etc).
Whatever the reason, I’m glad it exists as evidence in this historic collection that YES women do kiss women, and YES absolutely in Lebanon in the 1950s, and YES we’re going to keep doing it, especially when the camera’s off and the male gaze is fixed elsewhere.’
Queerated by Kathy Maniura, a member of Tate’s active LGBTQIA+ Staff Network.
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