Images from across a spectrum

Keavy Handley-Byrne’s photograph “Alice Cuts My Hair” (2018) is among 38 works by contemporary artists in the exhibit “Spectrum: Exploring Gender Identification,” which runs through Nov. 18 at Gallery 51 in North Adams. courtesy Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts/Gallery 51

 

By KATE ABBOTT
Contributing writer

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.
A father sits at his desk, holding his infant child and offering milk in a bottle.

An older child stands near him, with drawing paper spread out on a chair. They are resting together in a drawing in pencil or ink on a warmly lit background, touched here and there with bright color.

In another image, a black-and-white photograph, two people hold each other close, their heads turned in to rest on each other’s shoulders.

Some of the images show love, and some show fear, anger or laughter – or all of these things together. They are all deeply intimate, in one way or another.

Thirty-eight works by contemporary artists examine a subject that has become a public conversation across the country. It can be a matter of love and self-worth. It can be a matter of life and death.

And it is the matter for a group show and performances this fall at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. The exhibit, “Spectrum: Exploring Gender Identification,” opened Sept. 27 and runs through Nov. 18 at MCLA’s Gallery 51.

The idea of gender is complex and layered, curator Arthur De Bow explained.
What does it mean to be a man, to be a woman, to feel like some of both or neither one?
De Bow offered the show’s artists the idea, “and this is not a quote from me,” he said, “that gender is not about what’s between your legs; it’s about what’s between your ears.”
Gender can involve and move beyond what we are born with, what identifies us, how we think about our minds and bodies — how we feel the people and society around us, and what they are thinking about us and about themselves.

This show, De Bow said, “begins as all my shows do,” with “what’s topical, what has appeal, what could have importance in this time and space, and this place.”

 

Joining a broader conversation
In an exhibit space belonging to a college, De Bow said he is aware always of showing work that matters to the students, that touches what they are learning and what they are living through.
“Issues of gender … are at the forefront in our society right now,” he said. “They have come to the surface as important nationally and internationally, here or on campus.”

De Bow has spent many years exploring the influence of art in a college community. He and his husband came to North Adams from Oregon two years ago, and De Bow had served as exhibits director and curator of alumni affairs at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland for more than 20 years.

He also has run and curated galleries in Portland and New York, and he is an artist himself -- in book and fiber arts, prints, mixed media and costume design in Portland and Off-Broadway.
Although De Bow has known many artists whose work deals with themes of gender identity, he said the response he has gotten for this show overwhelmed and delighted him.

He said he put out a national call for submissions, seeking to broaden the scope and the diversity of the artists in this exhibit -- and the diversity of where they live in the United States and the world, which can have a bearing on their work.

The jury received more than 160 submissions and 500 pieces of work. They chose pieces by 30 artists across the country, from Texas and Missouri to Los Angeles to the Bronx, as well as from three international artists from the United Kingdom, Thailand and Slovenia.

The show gathers work in many media -- film, 3-D, ceramics, fiber art, photography, paintings, drawings, mixed media, wood and metalwork.

“We are thrilled about this,” De Bow said. “We have work in the show that is strikingly beautiful, work that is full of content, work that is thought-provoking -- work that I know will be challenging in its concept, in its message, and potentially, for some, in its imagery.”

He made sure the jurors, including himself, did not turn away from a work because it challenged them or might challenge others. He said they chose each work for its strength and quality and integrity.

“What makes a successful artwork is that it moves the viewer,” De Bow said.
A piece may move someone to joy, pain, anger, but what matters is that the work provokes an emotion, he said. If it calls out strong feeling, any feeling, then it has power.

 

Intimate to in-your-face
De Bow said it was important to him to be as inclusive as possible in this show, on a topic that touches every living human. He also wanted to show artists and works that he feels are not getting as much exposure as they should.

So the show considers gender on a broad continuum, from extreme masculinity to extreme femininity and every nuance in between: gay, trans, queer, binary and non-binary.

The artists reveal their observations of the people around them, patterns they see in society and challenges they have faced.

Raul Gonzales of San Antonio, Texas, reflects on what it means to be a dad, a man who works at home and looks after his children. His work considers how he feels, and how other people see him, because he has chosen to stay home while his wife leaves the house to work.

Other artists in the show reveal themselves in other ways. They confront hostility, and they honor courage. In one serene and beautiful photograph, De Bow feels a celebration of who that person is and how they show themselves in that image.

Other images may also say, “This is real, this is me, this is now; deal with it, and if you don’t like it, tough luck.”

“Some are humorous,” he said. “Some are extremely funny.”

On the morning he was interviewed for this story while gathering the pieces for the exhibit, De Bow had opened a wooden crate, as excited as a boy on Christmas morning, reveling in each nail he took out as he came closer to lifting the lid.

The crate held a pair of giant-sized, bright red, glittering stiletto heels.
“They’re wonderfully made – and funny,” he said. “I get what they’re saying, and they make me laugh. To me they say celebration, fun, dress-up, drag, bright color, and they say what the color red says. It’s vibrant and alive.”

He imagines someone wearing them, and they have the larger-than-life charisma of anything oversized, as loud as a colossal banana or grapefruit. They’ve stepped out of the realm of the everyday. And they balance comedy and joy with serious skill, like a dancer in the Ballets Trockadero leaping twice his own height in toe-shoes.

The giant high heels and other works also recognize assumptions in what people can come to believe about gender, often without knowing it. A child in a red shirt rubs tired eyes with a sleeve that bears the message, “Boys don’t cry.” A figure sits in silhouette, with short hair and knees drawn up, bathed in a deep rose light.

 

Defying expectations
Images like these can allude, directly or indirectly, to the messages people take in about men and women, how they are supposed to act, what they are supposed to wear or say or do.
People are calling out those assumptions today and challenging them in many public forums -- in dance and music, in film and on social media. De Bow has seen the debate in YouTube videos.
“Those barriers are getting broken down,” he said.

A boy can play with dolls, or a girl with a football, and that does not have to mean anything about their gender or expression or orientation -- or about anything but that they like people or running or games.
De Bow has con

fronted some of those assumptions and barriers himself.
“As a gay man growing up, I was extremely interested in sports,” he said. “And I was very good at sports. That was put down by what I’d loosely call the gay community. … I used to jokingly say I finally came out of the closet as a jock.”

As a double arts and theater major, he also found it hard in those days to say he enjoyed athletics and competition as well.

It’s a frustration common to “anyone questioning any form of identification and dealing with conflicts about it,” De Bow said.

He finds it also in people who feel that in some way they do not fit the shape their nation or faith or society assigns to their gender -- women who choose not to wear makeup, or enjoy playing Henry V, or who fall in love with women.

The same frustration, he said, turns up among young people considering transitioning away from the bodies they were born into, for many reasons.

De Bow said they may hear “society saying, ‘You must want to change from a birth female to a male because you like sports’ … or ‘from a male to a female because you want to wear makeup and frilly clothes.’”

But instead they’re saying, “No, it’s because of what I feel, in my body, in my brain, and so many things around that,” he explained.

In this show, two baseball-style jackets hang casually on chairs, showing the embroidered messages on the backs. Where they might say Kingpins Bowling Team, one reads “Transgender Gun Club,” and the other, “Name Your Rapist.”

“They’re poignant and a little in your face, appropriately,” De Bow said.
They recognize the violence and the consequences people can face for talking about gender as a complicated issue, and for living openly.

Other works are tender. One photograph shows a lover cutting her partner’s hair. Quietly, in a sheltered room, one person is touching another. Her partner sits with eyes closed, as her hand moves gently through the short hair.

 

“Spectrum: Exploring Gender Identification” remains on view through Nov. 18 at MCLA’s Gallery 51, at 51 Main St. in North Adams. The college also will offer related programming throughout the fall, including “What is queering?” on Oct. 25, a facilitated conversation exploring how artists and scholars are challenging heteronormative narratives, and “Spectrum: Embodied” on Nov. 16 and 17, two days of performances including a community ballez class with choreographer Katy Pyle. For more information visit www.mcla.edu/gallery51 or call (413) 662-5320.