It's Your PhD

A PhD tryer working through queerness, contemporary art and the possibility of more radical worlds.  Header image credit: To Catch A Dream, Jim Chuchu

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KI: Have you ever tried to visit Uganda? Any desire or plans to do so? PMS: I have never tried to visit Uganda, but I will one day. I have to.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, "As-yet-untitled work," 2009. Photograph, Ugandan bark-cloth bags, screw. Courtesy the Artist. 

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FOUND: Queerness as Archeology

Visit the post for more.

The exhibition surveys work of 28 contemporary artists whose work examines queer identity utilizing the tools of abstraction. To be queer is to be an archaeologist: in order to find traces of ourselves in a world that prefers us hidden, we excavate. We sift through the past for clues about ourselves, driven by our own impulse for survival. Through three specific contemporary observations of queerness, FOUND uncovers that queerness within art history has been depicted through the image of the alternatively sited body, and therefore lending itself to abstraction.

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The Largest Showcase Of Queer Fashion Designers At NYFW Will Be A 'R/Evolution'

"Fashion can be used as a tool for oppression, or as a means of resistance, self-love, and liberation. This year’s show feels more important than ever."

“Queer fashion is direct disobedience and a reclaiming of agency over our bodies, it is a declaration of existence in spite of attempts at erasure . It is a celebration of our beauty in the face of constant messages declaring our unworthiness. It is our armor. It is our shine. It is our resilience". http://bit.ly/2IjhDGn via @huffpostqueer

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Who knew Foucault could be so beautiful:

“How is it possible for men to be together? To live together, to share their time, their meals, their room, their leisure, their grief, their knowledge, their confidence? What is it to be naked among men, outside of institutional relations, family, profession, and obligatory camaraderie? It’s a desire, an uneasiness, a desire in uneasiness that exists among a lot of people”.

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New Queer Voices, Edited by Adam Lowe

SPOKE: New Queer Voices brings together some of the very best young writers working today. United yet multiple, together but disparate, the writers herein encompass a range of genres and styles. Inside you’ll find essays, poems, plays, a song, a map and a comic. Themes include love, dance, drag, social justice, family and social media.

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Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. - Announcements - e-flux

Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., Traveling exhibition

Queer Exhibition Making

“While the exhibition’s heart looks at the work of Chicanx artists in Los Angeles, it reveals extensive new research into the collaborative networks that connected these artists to one another and to artists from many different communities, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, and international urban centers, thus deepening and expanding narratives about the development of the Chicano Art Movement, performance art, and queer aesthetics and practices”. 

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Jim Chuchu, Invocations (2015)

The Severance of Ties:  a young initiate invokes a future-past rite of separation of the individual from the collective, independent will from tribal duty.

Release: a young initiate experiences the cleansing release that follows the breaking of autocratic bonds.

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Gabriel, by Awuor Onyango

https://the-dots.com/projects/visibility-is-a-trap-169914

From the exhibition, Visibility is a Trap.

“While being obsessed with how Nairobi queers navigate Nairobi in this space of being seen only as far as heteronormatively allowed I wanted to celebrate the space we have to reinvent ourselves within our own circles. That’s why the images are named after discarded names that my friends and I no longer use”. 

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It is with very heavy hearts and deep-felt sadness that we announce the cancellation of Pride Uganda 2017. Following the Police raid and interruption of the Pride parade last year, extra precaution was taken in organising this year’s festival.

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Chris Bogia’s “Sun Standers” (2017), a massive sculpture that plays host to a delightfully strange mix of juxtapositions. Lacquer, wallpaper, wood, steel, and yarn populate the work’s geometric design with the faded neon colors of a 1980s palette swatch. Bogia’s sculpture succeeds in inaugurating the exhibition space with a strong thematic take on the question of queer aesthetics. The artist has perched a small flower vase on a ledge jutting out of his sculpture, and noticing this small detail quickly contextualizes the sculpture, revealing the abstraction as an inverted, fragmented vision of the vase. This interplay between the coded and the decoder gestures toward the idea of queerness as a shared secret, a thing that gains power the longer you look at it.

https://hyperallergic.com/393644/a-queer-homage-to-a-1970s-lesbian-separatist/

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Uganda at London's Gay Pride 2017

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AfroCyberPunk is a blog dedicated to exploring the future of Africa through various expressions of Afrofuturism in science and speculative fiction across all forms of media, relevant news and current events about ongoing socioeconomic, political, and technological developments, as well as academic discourses on issues and trends concerning the future of this incredibly diverse continent.

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Dembe and Sam have been seeing each other for a while. They should be wondering where this is going and when to introduce each other to their families. But they're gay and this is Uganda. The consequences of their relationship being discovered will be violent and explosive. Especially for Dembe, whose brother goes into the pulpit each week to denounce the evils of one man loving another.

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Arcus Foundation is dedicated to supporting LGBT Social Justice and Great Apes Conservation. Push Boundaries. Make Change.

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East African Sexual Health and Rights Initiative is an indigenous activist fund which provides flexible, accessible resources to support civil society activism around issues of sexuality, health and human rights in the East African region (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi)

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‘Africa’s Out’: a bold loudspeaker and a groundbreaking proponent for radical change through 'Imaginative Activism', creative brilliance, and new effective methods of articulation. AFRICA'SOUT! harnesses the power of artists and the creative community, especially from within the African Diaspora, to highlight the urgency of pressing social and political issues through unique and dynamic platforms.