FACE 2.0

June 3, 2017
FACE 2.0
Queerness in Self-Portraiture

Opening reception is Saturday June 3rd
from: 1-4pm
SOMArts Cultural Center
wheelchair accessible
Free Event

Show is also open June 4th from 1-3pm.
FREE

Twenty years ago, a group of artists and activists met to create what would become Qcc The Center for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Art & Culture.   It was our intention to give voice to the under-represented artists of our community.

We began with a small SF Queer Arts Festival and a large exhibition (80 works by 51 artists) called FACE – Queerness in Self-Portraiture curated by QCC board members Rudy Lemcke and Lenore Chinn.

The curators’ description of the exhibition is a good description of what our festivals have tried to achieve for the last twenty years: We wanted this first exhibition to represent who we are, what we can be, and what we can accomplish. We wanted a place to start, to begin a serious discourse on queer culture…A place that celebrated difference as its mode of being and justice as its practice. We wanted to present ourselves not as an but as an array of unique individuals who share this “queerness.” We gathered these artists together in hope of creating this place, this center. We decided to start with introductions. A look into each other’s eyes. We decided to call this first gesture FACE.”

As Qcc celebrates its Twentieth National Queer Arts Festival and the SF LGBT Community Center celebrates Fifteen Years, we decided to bring back a few of the pieces from that original exhibition or ask artists for new ones to once again showcase the depth, breadth and faces of our Queer Community.

Thank you to the original artists who graced us with their work for our opening exhibition in 1998 and a special thank you to the 7 artists who allowed us to present their work, then and now:

Lenore Chinn
L.A. Hyder
Valerie Jacobs
Ramón Markus Kadi
Frank Pietronigro
Margo Rivera-Weiss
Jean Weisinger