Thirty minutes after I left “About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art” at Wrightwood 659, my husband and I had to take a last-minute flight to Oakland to be with his father, whose health had rapidly declined. We ran home and stuffed the last of our clean clothes into a bag. We booked one-way plane tickets from the back of a cab, breathlessly gunning for Midway in near silence. It was the kind of situation that put art, journalism, criticism, all of my bullshit on the back burner.
At its core, I think queerness is about uncertainty, and the show encapsulates this idea beautifully. Identities are forged, they are reinforced, they continue changing shape. There are, of course, the liquid lines of gender and sexuality that can be redrawn at the blink of an eye, but there are also larger questions looming overhead: Will we survive this? Do we actually have a shared history?
Through 8/10: by reservation only; see website; Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood, 773-437-6601, wrightwood659.org. F
