This weekend, Manifest Equality opened up at a temporary gallery in Hollywood. This short-lived exhibit, organized by Yosi Sargent, represents the artistic community’s response to Proposition 8 and how the struggle for equality fits in to the greater civil rights movement. I was fortunate enough to get to inteview one of the invited artists, Lisa Marie Thalhammer, at the show. [For a review of the show, check out Calvin's post here.]

Boxing a rainbow

Lisa Marie is a DC-based artist who met Yosi at a large thanksgiving dinner. He asked her to participate in Manifest Hope, the first show in the Manifest series that focused on the message of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. Lisa Marie found inspiration in the strength of Michelle Obama, and created a large portrait of the first lady. She recently finished a mural, Boxer Girl, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of DC that also portrayed a strong woman: a muscular young woman in boxing gloves, standing in front of a rainbow:

Although the mural was well received by many (including the DCPD, who noted a drop in crime in the neighborhood since the mural was completed), Lisa Marie was surprised at how people reacted so strongly to the rainbow behind the boxer girl, and realized thepower of the rainbow as a symbol.

The rainbow, she says, has long been a powerful symbol of diversity and beauty. “Rainbow flags have been a sign of diversity, inclusiveness, hope, equality and social change through out history,” she says. “From the biblical Noah, to the German Peasant War of the 16th century, to the Inca 1534 resistance in Peru, to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, to today’s LGBT equality campaign, the rainbow is a symbol of equality for many peoples.” Yet this rainbow raised the hackles of a few of the mural’s neighbors, and Lisa Marie was asked to “tone it down.”

A word is worth a thousand pictures

These reactions, both positive and negative, inspired the piece she created for Manifest Equality, entiteld (simply enough) Equality:

Whereas the attacks on her rainbows caught Lisa Marie by surprise in Boxer Girl, she seems to address the challenge head on in this piece.

Why are rainbows now so inflammatory to some homophobes? Lisa Marie attributes the hostility to their “third grade” appeal, which makes them so attractive to us. To link a message of tolerance of a persecuted class to a symbol associated with children is a shocking offense to the forces of intolerance–further proof of the rainbow’s power.

Why a text-based piece? “Conceptually, I am interested in how text can be used as a pictorial language,” she says. Isolated from any other graphical representation, the word “Equality” has its fullest impact on the viewer, who is forced to focus on the meaning of this word. A message so simple, paired with the childlike rainbow colors, make the message of Lisa Marie’s piece powerfully clear, that people of all ages should understand.

The use of text as graphical art was evident throughout the show. For example, one of Lisa Marie’s favorite pieces was a sculpture by Aaron Rose entitled Honeymoon Dowry, which shows two suitcases painted with the message “When love is oulawed, only outlaws will be lovers.” Munk One’s piece, Separate is not equal, shows a furious hot pink Uncle Sam decorating a wedding cake with this defiant message. Both Bartholomew Cooke’s Shattered and Aaron Axelrod’s The Constitution used the text of the nation’s founding document either shattered or smeared and distorted, as though to express the threat faced to the very foundation of our country.  Indeed, it seemed that many artists found inspiration in text as the vehicle of choice to convey an important message. A word, it appears, is worth a thousand pictures.

Real people, normal people

Lisa Marie’s other contribution to the exhibit, Darcey O’Callaghan & Romina A. Casadei, was more typical of her oeuvre, in that it was a figurative portrait of a couple, two friends of hers that have been together for nearly five years:

This portrait was originally created for the DC office of the Human Rights Campaign. Nonetheless, it was particularly appropriate for Manifest Equality, as it complemented so many other pieces in the exhibit: it was a portrayal of a queer couple, with an intense focus on the characteristics that make them “real”. Such portrayals, so lacking in the failed campaign against Proposition 8, humanizes the people so harmed by these discriminatory statutes.

Lisa Marie particularly enjoyed including figures of women who both embody and defy normal gender expression.  To her, these were “real people” who “encompassed the strength of womanhood I longed for.” In her portrait, Romina has a fairly masculine appearance on first glance–she could easily be mistaken for a man at first, but a closer look reveals her more feminine qualities, such as her exposed cleavage and black bra.

Although most of her portraits focus on isolated figures of women, highlighting their independence and strength, Darcy & Romina instead emphasizes the closeness of these two women. Indeed, their bodies almost blend together as a single mass of entangled limbs. Although queer couples differ from normal in the balance of masculine and feminie qualities, the closeness of these partners is indistinguishable from any heterosexual pairing.

Darcy & Romina is a great representation of these two conflicting themes that were evident throughout the show: that queer couples are normal, and at the same time different. Pieces like J. Frede’s Behind Closed Doors, and Alex Smith’s State of the Union series show gay couples in “normal” nearly mundane environments, like their kitchens and living rooms. But other artists strove to emphasize the way queer couples are different. Some, like Eddie’s Just Married (showing two young punk girls in a sensual embrace) of openly embrace the sexuality and passion of marriage that seems to be the exact opposite of heteronormative matrimony. Similarly, Tierney Gearon’s untitle d portrait of a naked family headed by two women emphasizes how queer couples are less bound by traditional restrictions and are more focused on the core relationships within a family. Darcy & Romina is notable for emphazing both the normalcy and the “queerness” of a queer relationship. Although they are superficially different, even unusual, from typical couples, their love is the same, and is the reason why they deserve to be treated with equality and respect.

Published Date: 03/09/2010
SECTION: Arts | REGION: Los Angeles, CA
SOURCE: The New Gay

Category: Art, ArtCulture, CultureLocal, LocalLos Angeles, Los AngelesAaron Rose, Aaron Rosebarack obama, barack obamaBartholomew Cooke, Bartholomew CookeCalifornia, CaliforniaGallery, GalleryHollywood, Hollywo