The
Queer
Theory
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No New Pain (The Tool Library)
Written by Dani Janae, No New Pain is a series of poems made in response to Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House, commissioned by The Queer Theory Library. Janae’s poems were then engraved on a set of hand tools, made to be functional and available to the public as a tool library that can be checked out for use and for reading.
Engraved handtools, book, library cards.
Installed at Deering Estate for the 2023 Spring Contemporary exhibition Closer to Nature.
2021/2023
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.
This Bitter Earth
Written, Produced, and Directed by Summer Jade Leavitt and Cara Dodge for The Queer Theory Library
Stills by Rebeca Mendizabal
2023
The Queer Theory Library is a library focused on creating a collective space for discussion, experimentation, and knowledge. Providing access to academic texts and activating them with curated cultural programming, the Library invites an engaged, imaginative experience and greater community dialogue. The Queer Theory Library also functions as an growing archive for local artists, writers, and residents to submit their work, writings, and ephemera.
With a mission to radically shift and explore possibilities for queer thought, culture, and liberation, the Library is focused on abolition and futurism. How we frame our past and present influences the future we build; how we perceive and write our realities creates new worlds. Through education, collaboration, and creation, the QTL aims to enable, empower, and inspire our queer communities.
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Untitled (The Seventh Sun Comes)
Framed text, moss scented yarzheit candle, dew drops, 33 year recovery medallion, burnt penny, green carnation, tabebuia trunk, snail shell.
Installed at Bas Fisher Invitational for The Symbiotic Shore
2021