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This panel joins scholars, artists, and curators, some with practices based in Chicago, to explore the potential of femme, non-binary, and queer of color imaginaries in transforming the landscapes of contemporary art. The practices under discussion do not seek institutional inclusivity via respectability politics, but rather, engage acts of truth telling through whimsicality. These approaches can be understood as what artist Mickalene Thomas describes as “visceral play”(Tinson 2014), a mode of practice that recreates forms out of what is available, embraces contradiction, and is attuned to the specificities of racialized/gendered subjectivity while resisting identity politics.

Papers highlight how artists such as Zanele Muholi, Sadie Barnette, Mickalene Thomas, and Yvette Mayorga utilize social media and vernacular objects often associated with domesticity, leisure, celebration, and feminine craft and grooming practices (such as rhinestones, glitter, makeup, and frosting), to visualize and reframe gendered and racialized imaginaries in the contemporary visual field. The panel will consider how this approach was demonstrated in the 2017 exhibition project The Petty Biennial in Chicago, organized by La Keisha Leek, Sadie Woods, and the Art + Public Life’s Inaugural Curatorial Collective. The Biennial featured work and programming by local queer and woman of color artists, and aimed to unsettle the formation of conventional biennials by centering the local. The exhibition included works that affirm women and queer people of color on their own terms, like Darryll Terrell’s Untitled (Dion #2) (2016), and Ricardo Gamboa’s ludic watercolor paintings titled Fag Fucking is Prettier Than Yo Mama (2017).