Closer to Nature
Spring Contemporary Exhibition at Deering Estate
April 15 - June 11
Curated by Summer Jade Leavitt
Deering Estate’s Spring Contemporary exhibition Closer to Nature explores concepts of queer ecofeminism: intersections of queer theory, feminism, race, science, and nature. The exhibition shares works that deal with experiences of looking for/finding oneself in nature and expanding the environments for queer existence to thrive. The exhibition is curated by guest curator Summer Jade Leavitt.
The works in the exhibition range from sculpture, installation, poetry, performance, artifact, and video will sprawl across the Estate’s grounds and in the Great Hall of the Stone House. The media and materials the artists use here, including somatic poetry rituals, spell work, living sculpture, drag, performance art, and ephemeral artifacts challenge tradition, using experimental methods for creating, writing, thinking, and performing. These works observe oppressive structures, embody defiance, and provide the antidote to their restraints. Looking into the hidden, unseen, impossible, extinct, and unknown, the artists here exemplify what it means to be queer: to give language to a world larger than the one we find ourselves in.
In Greta Gaard’s essay Toward a Queer Ecofeminism, Gaard dissects the contradictions in culturally constructed binaries that were used to justify colonialism and enforce hierarchy; in dualisms, human/nature, reason/emotion, mind/spirit, the oppressed groups are seen in Western culture as “closer to nature”, yet queerness is frequently devalued for being “against nature”. While this implies that nature is valued and protected, recent environmental disasters and climate crisis demonstrates otherwise.
In these colonial structures, that which wanders outside of reason, order, rationality, and production is punished and subordinated. To reject that colonization requires embracing the natural in all its diversity and collaborating to create shared liberation.
Exhibiting artists include Tsohil Bhatia, CA Conrad, Christy Gast, GeoVanna Gonzalez, Kasem Kydd, Kunst, Lee Pivnik, Dani Janae and The Queer Theory Library, and X Medianoche.