ANN ARBOR, Mich. – What does it mean to find strange joy in an emergency? For Holly Hughes, it starts with embracing euphoria.
Sex euphoria is the title Hughes – an acclaimed performance artist and playwright – chose for a semester-long symposium at the University of Michigan, where they teach at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. Described online as a series of ‘performances, exhibitions, conversations and provocations’ designed to “Discover how to make art and find strange joy in a state of emergency,” feels more urgent than ever.
“I didn’t just want to celebrate queer artmaking, although I always want to do that, but I thought queer artists had something crucial to offer in this particular moment of overlapping emergency,” Hughes shared. Hyperallergic by email. “The queer community has a long history of using creative expression, often humorous, joyful and erotic, to not only survive but thrive in uncertain and challenging times. That feeling of play and celebration is often present when conditions are dire.”
Born in Michigan, Hughes came of age as an artist in New York just as the AIDS epidemic began to devastate gay communities. They found refuge in Manhattan WOW Café Theater and in making art. With Gender Euphoria, Hughes and an impressive array of artists and scholars seek to cultivate a similar sense of queer community. As LGBTQ+ rights are rolled back at the state and national level, that is happening crucial for supporting queer and gender studies, areas that are increasingly under attack.
The symposium kicked off on September 12 with a keynote speech and performance by the LA-based musician and artist, and “All American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger.” Phranc. This was followed by the opening of The Butch Closetan exhibition of Phranc’s visual art at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities Gallery, curated by Amanda Krugliak and running through October 25.
“The community saved my life,” Phranc said in a phone interview. The artist found her first like-minded peers at the Women’s Center in Venice Beach and in LA’s punk scene in the 1980s before embarking on a solo music career. After a family tragedy, she turned to sculpture, meticulously creating replicas of meaningful garments from cardboard. Some of these can be seen in The Butch Closetincluding a “magic coat” that served as protective armor in her youth, as she writes in the catalog, and her signature combat boots.
Fittingly, the centerpiece of the exhibition is a reproduction of Phranc’s childhood closet. Filled with the clothes, photos and memorabilia that supported her, it reflects the sanctuaries of self-expression that many marginalized people create for themselves. For the artist, the Gender Euphoria symposium is about “connecting with the queer community of today and tomorrow… and being part of the bigger picture.”
Phranc also emphasized the importance of humor in her work as a way to open lines of communication, and humor is a common thread throughout Gender Euphoria. Of Killjoy’s Kastle disconnectedOn November 2, Toronto-based artists Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell bring a sense of mischief and a maximalist aesthetic to the history of LGBTQ+ feminism. The artists described their “lesbian feminist haunted house” via email as “a nightmarish vision of feminist terror where visitors are encouraged to engage in dialogue about contemporary queer politics.”
Each site-specific iteration “unfolds lesbian history for the present” and “depends on community connection,” they explained. Yet there are concerns that Killjoy’s Kastle is more of a didactic exercise in queer and feminist theory than a riotous perversion of a Christian.hell house‘ should be dispelled by characters like the ‘polyamorous feminist grannies’, zombie nymphs and the ghost of Valerie Solanas – the infamous author of SCUM Manifesto – greeting visitors at the entrance.
Project leader symposium Leah Crosby and artist and professor Larry La Fountain adding to the symposium’s lineup of Halloween festivities. La Fountain brings out his drag character, Lola von Miramar, “to give everyone a very spooky time,” and on October 8, Crosby will give Freaky Fibers, a workshop on crocheting spider webs.
These events are accompanied by group discussions bringing together artists and scientists from different fields. On November 1, Ann Arbor’s Stamps Gallery will host two long table conversations, as well as a book launch party for Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life by dance historian Clare Croft. The book launch features a discussion between the author and pioneering queer cultural anthropologist Esther Newton, most recently the author of My Butch Career (2018).
Artist Joey Quinoneshead of the Fiber Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, sees the long table conversations as an “opportunity for meaningful dialogue with Black, brown and queer people in Michigan.” Quiñones will be in conversation with Chris E. Vargas, author of Trans-identity in 99 objects; Tony Whitfield; Nicole Marroquin; Andrea Bolivar; and others.
“As someone who identifies as Afro-Latinx and queer, I often find myself in conversations where race trumps everything,” Quiñones added by email. “If we have learned anything at all about intersectionality, all my social categories are always with me, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict.”
The symposium will conclude on November 21 with “Breaking down our walls”, a lecture by artist, curator and teacher Nayland Blake. Blake will also host one Gender throwaway party as part of an ongoing project in which visitors are invited to give away an item that signifies ‘an incriminating aspect of gender’, in the artist’s words. “It’s a place where people can come together and talk about how the objects in their own lives have acted to enhance or hinder their self-understanding, and give them the opportunity to change that,” they said. Hyperallergic in a telephone conversation.
For Blake, who was the subject of a traveling career survey in 2019-2020 and has a book of their collected writings from Duke University Press, the current culture wars over gender theory speak to the potential of queer radicalism.
“It’s controversial right now because people understand how powerful it is,” they noted, concluding: “People who are disenfranchised by mainstream art systems are starting to build their own power… At some point it will be cut down and so they do things like [Gender Euphoria] is the way we can keep this going.”
If Gender Euphoria seems like the kind of celebration that could only happen on the coast, it’s worth remembering the countless contributions to LGBTQ+ art, culture and activism with roots in cities and college campuses across the country. “The University of Michigan has been the starting point for so much scholarly work in the field of queer studies, with some of the field’s most well-known scholars on its faculty… It is also the site of the first ‘LGBTQ+’ student center, which was founded over 60 years ago,” Hughes explained.
The symposium raises awareness and education about queer life in a 2024 swing state with a fiercely divided political landscape—and, just as importantly, Hughes and their collaborators provide LGBTQ+ people with the tools for resilience in the face of oppression and eradication . Growing up in Saginaw, Michigan, in the 1960s and 1970s, Hughes didn’t have those comforts. With Gender Euphoria they return to their roots and work outwards from the middle of America to bring people together and break the binary system.
