Art punches back
‘A History of Violence’ explores shaping force of LGBT community
In his 1986-87 film “A Fire in My Belly,” the late artist David Wojnarowicz creates a jerky digital collage. The movie flits between footage of a bullfight, a cockfight and a wrestling match. A split loaf of bread is stitched back together with bright red string; the same string is used to seal a person’s bloody mouth. If there’s a spiritual center for “A History of Violence,” an exhibition presented by the Queer Cultural Center at SOMArts through June 28, it is this piece. The show, curated by Rudy Lemcke, is a deep and expansive look at the ways in which the LGBT community has been shaped by violence — forms of violence committed through politics, economics and culture. “A Fire in My Belly” presents violence at its most visually literal, and in subtext that references the AIDS
crisis and the loss of close friends. But its place as a starting point for the exhibition comes not from its content, but rather the response to its content. In 2010, the piece was removed from a show at the National Portrait Gallery after religious leaders and conservative politicians complained about clips in the film that showed a crucifix covered in ants.
The violence that Wojnarowicz was seeking to address was, then, compounded by erasure. There are many ways to understand and examine violence. Wojnarowicz clearly understood that, and Lemcke uses the piece’s images and history as a way to ignite a broad conversation with 14 other California artists.
“He is sort of the patron saint of activist art,” Lemcke says. “He inspired the whole show in a way — (in) what he was saying in his artwork and how he was treated.”
Most of the other pieces, though created by queer people, focus on other sorts of violence. As Lemcke puts it, they offer “more abstract ideas of what violence is and how it manifests itself in different people.”
Three artists address gun violence. In the video piece “103 Shots,” the multimedia artist Cassils shows, in staccato, black and white footage of pairs of couples and friends embracing with a balloon between their bodies until the pressure causes it to burst. The film was made during San Francisco Pride in 2016, just weeks after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. One survivor of the shooting — which left 103 people at the gay nightclub either dead or injured — describes hearing the sound of a gun repeatedly being fired as “balloons popping.”
That audio from “103 shots,” the continuous popping, can be heard as visitors examine Jamee Crusan’s work. Crusan, too, reacts to the Pulse attack, this time with cyanotyped felt that would seem to have no connection to the massacre at first view. But as one draws closer to the piece titled “Treasures Buried Deep Are Often Guarded by the Deadliest of Demons,” the bullet holes became more visible as tears in the thick felt.
Next to Crusan’s work, Bren Ahearn presents a series of nine large-scale cross-stitchings that spell out rules for active-shooter situations: “1. Run/ 2. Hide/ 3. Fight.” The piece acts as though these rules are as commonplace as the phrase “Home Sweet Home.”
That gun violence would arise frequently in the show doesn’t feel surprising to artist Angela Hennessy. She herself is a survivor of gun violence.
“The title of the show resonated for me right away,” says Hennessy. “Ideas about violence are embedded in my work already.”
Her own piece, “Bling,” is a series of hanging black and gold chains, some large, some small, some made from synthetic and human hair. The name casts the chains as objects that adorn a body, but they also immediately evoke slave chains. “I wanted to see if all that could coexist in the same object or series of objects,” she says.
Another contributing artist, Viêt Lê, also uses a historical lens to examine violence.
“My research, as an artist and an academic, is about about traumas and and violence — particularly about the traumas of history and modernization,” says Lê, whose work stems, in large part, from his own history as a Vietnamese boat refugee.
Lê has three videos on rotation, each a piece of the “Love Bang Trilogy.” The pieces have the veneer of “cheesy pop videos.” But Lê uses this camp and humor as a way to indicate that even in times of violence or trauma, there’s still joy even while addressing the “deep wound of cultural violence,” he explains.
Other pieces in the show reference the 1978 assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the state’s first openly gay elected official, and biblical instructions for the size of rock to be used during a stoning. In a series of photos, Tim Roseborough looks at how subtle gestures can be violent, intended or not. And Arthur Dong’s 1996 “Licensed to Kill” documentary takes views into prison, where he interviews the convicted killers of gay men.
All of this can feel heavy, particularly at a time of year — Pride month — that is generally associated with parades and parties and rainbows. That’s not lost on Lemcke. “A lot of times you see the Pride Parade and its feather boas. That’s just the bling,” he says. “It’s cool, but it’s reflected off of a wound.”