Parallax
Featuring: Mengwen Cao, Naima Green, Tara-Lynne Pixley, Charmaine Poh, Gabriel Garcia Roman, Ka-Man Tse, Brian Vu, Justin J. Wee, Elizabeth Wirija, Salgu Wissmath
Presented by
Authority Collective
Curated by
Mengwen Cao and Tara Pixley
This series of photographic and filmic portraits of queer people of color grows from a simple inquiry, a desire to envision the theoretical as material: What is queer? What experiences and bodies are obscured by certain notions of queerness writ large in the cultural imagination?
To queer has gradually become an academic catchphrase, a call-to-arms, and an intervention intended to destabilize normalcy. Queer is many things to many people across various contexts. As such, the queer lived experience is beyond blurred. It now signals intersections of gender, sexuality, race, (dis)ability and various other modes of being. Yet, certain racial and gendered embodiments have achieved their own level of normalcy, rewriting what LGBTQIA is in their own image, adjusting the social lens to keep themselves primarily in focus.
A parallax is the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions. By portraying individuals who occupy the intersection of queer embodiment and blackness/brownness, who defy the accepted binaries of gender and sexuality, these portraits provide a rare, alternate view of the contemporary queer experience.
Make sure to also check out related Talk Parallax: ReVisioning Queer and Trans People of Color in Photography.
ARTIST BIO
As an organization that seeks to recognize and highlight the work of POC photographers, specifically inclusive of queer, trans, and nonbinary visual media makers, Authority Collective invites photographers of color to re-vision the lexicon that imagines the queer form, framing it as beautiful, strong, complex, and multi-faceted.
Pulling from work such as Salgu Wissmath’s documentation of gender dysphoria, and Ka-Man Tse’s quiet rumination on the queer quotidian, this exhibit offers a rarely seen snapshot into queer of color existence.
ORGANIZATION BIO
The Authority Collective is a group of womxn, femmes, non-binary and transgender people of color reclaiming their authority in the photography, film, and VR/AR industries.
Our mission is to empower marginalized artists with resources and community, and to take action against systemic and individual abuses in the world of lens-based editorial, documentary, and commercial visual work.