LGBTQ+ History Month 2022: Politics in Art
Keith Haring
Keith Haring (1958-1990) was an American pop artist who advocated for safe sex and AIDS awareness through his images.
He started his work by using white chalk on black paper in subway museums. These public "subway drawings" became part of New York culture which many commuters became familiar with.
Alongside his production of murals, paintings and sculptures, his work was used to benefit health centres and disadvantaged communities. He conducted art workshops with children and designed logos for public service agencies.
Following his AIDS diagnosis in 1988, he established the Keith Haring Foundation to provide funding to AIDS organisations. The Foundation now "supports arts and educational institutions by funding exhibitions, programming, and publications that serve to contextualise and illuminate Haring’s work and philosophy"
Fiore de Henriquez
Fiore de Henriquez (1921-2004) was an Italian-British sculptor known for her common themes of androgyny, ambiguous creatures and twinning heads. Her experience of being intersex informed a lot of her work.
She declared as "two people inside one body", expressing herself through her dress sense and work which explored the experiences she had faced during her life.
Dors Brabham Hatt
Doris Brabham Hatt (1890-1969) was a modernist artist and feminist activist. Her distinctive style was exhibited over 5 decades featuring in over 40 exhibitions.
Her activism started during the First World War in London, where she saw high levels of poverty amongst Londoners. She was also engaged in the Women's Suffrage and New Woman movements.
Her lifelong partner, Margery Mack Smith, preserved Hatt's sketchbooks and portfolios after a relative had burnt her work in attempt to conceal her life as a feminist and lesbian.
Jean Michael Basquiat
Jean Michael Basquiat (1960-1988) used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for self-examination and for identifying with his experiences in the Black community as well as attacking power structures and systems of racism.
Basquiat's signature motif was the crown. It's three peaks represent the poet, the musician and the champion. He decorated black figures in his work with crowns and halos to encourage the Black community.
Mark Aguhar
Mark Aguhar (1987-2012) was an American activist, writer and multimedia fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and transfeminine.
Mark's work demonstrated personal expression through beauty to justify the everyday existence of the LGBTQ+ community. Her work which started on tumblr was later showcased across various exhibitions.
LGBTQ+ History Month
The tag line from this year LGBTQ+ History Month is taken from the Dr Martin Luther King Jr. quote “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”.
Whilst we have come a long way in the fight for equality, there are still many LGBTQ+ people suffering. As we continue to make steps to protect and uplift the lives of the LGBTQ+ community, it is important to educate ourselves on the steps taken and those yet to be made.
You can find out more about LGBTQ+ History Month and find LGBTQ+ History Month Resources here.