Dear friends and allies,

Pride season is proving to be fruitful. Many queer professionals will recognize the sudden rush of work they get during pride season, which is no different for us. Our participatory artwork Our Exquisite Corpse is making its way to more locations, the first season of Palari at Grand Theatre is in development and in the meantime we travel all over the place to give talks and provide our expertise. On July 9^th we were invited by the Roze Netwerk of two ministries (Economic Affairs and Agriculture) to give a lunch lecture on queer activist art in The Hague. On July 14^th Arlo participated in two panel talks at Dichters in de Prinsentuin, one about activism in art and the other about quality and our valuing of art based on notions of quality. Especially the latter seemed to cause a bit of a stir, since the core question of the panel, ‘Is quality dead?’, was taken directly from our manifesto. The notion that we value art based on an outdated and oppressive definition of ‘quality’ seemed to be a completely new train of thought to some people. Add the label ‘queer’ to that, and you can count on some resistance to the topic. That clearly goes for anything else we add the label ‘queer’ to.

Queerness and art history encountered each other recently in a collective backlash against the Olympic opening ceremony. Christians were angry. Because they misinterpreted a scene taken from Greek mythology as the Last Supper with drag queens. Blasphemy! To the highest degree. Thankfully art historians decided to speak up and point out the scene was more likely representing The Feast of Dionysus, the god of wine and pleasure. Still, hedonism, but nothing the ancient Greeks have never shown us before. Thomas Jolly, the creative director of the opening ceremony, further explained that Dionysus is the father of Sequana, goddess of the River Seine. On X, art historian Walther Schoonenberg explained how he believes the scene specifically references the 1635 painting The Feast of the Gods by Jan van Bijlert. Plenty of proof going around that the scene they showed was not only not blasphemous, but not queer either. But what if it was? The ancient Greeks weren’t necessarily known for their conservatism. We already (subconsciously or not) read the lavishness of the scene, the bare skin, the hedonism of it all as queer. It’s apparently just a bit of a scary word. It’s why we are weary of the ‘it shouldn’t have to be an issue’ talking point we often receive at our talks and panel discussions. Behind the unwillingness to mention or talk about queerness under the guise of equality hides good old fashioned homophobia. If queerness truly wasn’t an issue in this world anymore, putting Dionysus in drag wouldn’t be either. Let’s do Jesus next.

Save the date: Palari #2 on September 8th

On September 8^th the next edition of Palari, our series of queer salons will take place at Grand Theatre, Groningen. Palari offers a space for individuals seeking to explore (visual) art within a queer framework, discover the rich history of queer culture, and engage with the local community. Each salon will center around a unique theme and we will feature diverse guest speakers.

This next edition will be all about craft(ivism), providing more context to the topic as well as our own participatory artwork Our Exquisite Corpse. The afternoon will start with a short lecture by Rozemarijn van der Wal, a researcher at the Research Centre for Immaterial Heritage in Arnhem. She will talk about queer immaterial heritage and show examples of queer craft projects throughout history that have worked towards shaping a better future. After we have gained our inspiration we will start our own craft session led by fibre artist Elze Kloen who will teach you how to make your own patches. Additionally, the owners of Sappho Vintage will be present to teach you how to repair your own damaged clothing. We will provide the materials, all you need to bring is your favorite clothes that you want to fix!

Save the date: September 8th, 17:00, Grand Theatre Groningen

Our Exquisite Corpse

The first stitches have been made, and the participatory artwork Our Exquisite Corpse is well underway! In a total of three public sessions at Blikopener Festival and Roze Zaterdag we have gotten up to 7,438 minutes. This includes some panels that have been made by participants at home and sent or delivered to us. If you want to join from home you can send or deliver your panel to Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9728HD Groningen. Make sure to add a note addressing the Pink Cube and with the amount of time you spent on it.

Thankfully there are also public sessions lined up that you can join:

• August 22: Noorderzon, Groningen, 16:00 - 19:00 (€7,- entry)

• September 14: UIT Festival, Joure

• November 14  and 15: What You See Festival, Utrecht, 16:00 – 20:00 (Theater Kikker)

Our Exquisite Corpse also has its own Instagram account. Here we will upload each panel that is submitted to document our progress. If you see your panel and would like us to tag you, send us a message!

It’s all in the details

Queering Botticelli’s Tondo

_{Iris Rijnsewijn}

When walking through the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin last year I encountered Botticelli’s Mary with Child and Singing Angels (ca. 1478), a quintessential Christian representation of maternal devotion and angelic reverence. The Virgin Mary holds a young Christ as they are surrounded by a choir of angels, radiating a serene, almost otherworldly calm. And though I’ve seen this painting many times before, last year one detail stood out to me for the first time.

Something about her left hand caught my attention. Part of this might have been intentional, as this hand gesture, where the middle and ring finger are close together while the others are spread out, became a whole trend a while later, during Mannerism. Both men and women are seen in a plethora of paintings with a hand posed like this, which was supposed to express a certain elegance. This can most famously be seen in El Greco’s work, for instance in his The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest (ca. 1580). However, these hands have their fingers extended, where in Botticelli’s they are curled, with the middle and ring fingers pulled in more than the other three. I don’t know exactly what prompted my sudden unholy association, perhaps the lighting made it stand out, perhaps it simply says a lot about me. But that left hand is a lesbian hand if I’ve ever seen one. The pose, the angle, the thumb sticking out, all very sapphic. One could argue that the pose is suggestive outside of any particular sexual identity. Yet, the association sprung not only from my own lived experience, it was also rooted in a particular part of lesbian culture: the hand kink. 

Hands are generally an important body part for lesbians, and I assume I can trust you to know why. But the hand thing goes beyond just their functionality, there’s an aesthetic to it. One example that immediately came to mind was Héloïse’s hand in the titular portrait in Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019), which is not only placed between pages 27 and 28 of a book for erotic purposes, but plays an important part in storytelling as well. This obsession for hands became more explicit recently in a particular TikTok trend, where lesbian individuals would talk about ‘the lesbian hand thing’. According to them, there is such a thing as queer hands. Not just clockable by the short nails and a surprising amount of rings, but purely by their vibe. What followed was a bunch of thirst traps where queer women would first show their hands and then their face, post videos making suggestive hand gestures to allude to their skills in bed or show their hand playing around in a wet sink (I’m not kidding). And, although we don’t claim her, I even saw a not-so-subtle use of this in Jojo Siwa’s promotion for her new song Guilty Pleasure, where she accompanies the lyrics ‘come over in my direction’ with a beckoning sign that traditionally is done with one finger, but she consistently uses two. The posed hand of Mary with her two fingers curled inward, reminded me not only of these videos, but of something that is inherently queer in my experiences. The gesture, combined with Botticelli’s ability to delicately portray his subjects and the right audience, culminate in a subtle reference to lesbian intimacy—a reminder that even within the confines of traditional narratives, there exists the possibility of a queer (and admittedly deviant) interpretation.