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Devotion: A Queer Photography Exhibition
2024
LATITUDE Chicago
Devotion: A Queer Photography Exhibition
Curated by Taylor Roberts and Grace Coudal
“Church can be feeling pleasure, when the world would have you feel none, church can be your body, under the heat of the stars.” —Emma Loomis-Amrhein
Queerness is transformation, a disruption of what seems to be or what must be normative. When we find ourselves thinking of familial bonds as blood ties or love in singular portrayals, queerness changes us, transforms us, and reminds us to imagine beyond what we know or can know.
Devotion: A Queer Photography Exhibition is an evocation of devotion as sanctuary; in the refuge of each other’s arms, the safety of belonging, the fidelity to our continued existence, and the hopefulness for our flourishing. In an era of “eternally absent people”*, it is a prayer for soulful devoutness and an acknowledgment of our capacity to be tender.
The ten artists in this exhibition explore devotion through religious rites, expressions of romantic, familial, and platonic love, and worship for the queer body. From long-held unions to momentary interactions and intimate reunions, the works in Devotion: A Queer Photography Exhibition ask us to find sanctity in each other.
*Queer Exhibition Histories by Bas Hendrikx (ed.) from REAL ART ON LOVE AIDS RIOT SEX: A Meditation on Art Exhibitions about HIV/AIDS in the German-speaking Region, and Why Such Perspectives Still Matter Today written by Lo én Zrujswjik (pg. 131)