Fan the Flames: Queer Positions in Photography

EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

The AGO celebrates WorldPride 2014 in Toronto with an exhibition that explores queer identity and the play of gender. Artists have used photographs and videos to question gender norms and express an expanded range of individual identities. The history of these representations - by queer artists and of queer subjects - charts an increasingly diverse and public presence that challenges us to consider the ways everyday gestures, objects, tastes and styles construct and dismantle our gendered selves.

Fan the Flames showcases works by such Canadian and international figures as varied as Raphael Bendahan, Brassaï, Claude Cahun, Colin Campbell, Chris Curreri, Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan, Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst, Nan Goldin, Nina Levitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mark Morrisroe, Will Munro, Alice O’Malley, Catherine Opie, Ho Tam and Weegee, among others. The artists document, perform, appropriate, collect and reinterpret images to present a range of views on fashioning the self through photographs and videos. The exhibition also includes Herb Ritts' cover with Cindy Crawford and kd lang for Vanity Fair as well as YouTube videos, selected by curator Jon Davies, and objects from the personal collections of artist Cynthia Greig and critic and curator Vince Aletti.

The exhibition will feature historical and contemporary works drawn from the AGO's permanent collection, and private collections.

VIDEOS

Click here to listen to activist, writer, facilitator and educator Kim Crosby Milan’s in-gallery audio tour of Fan the Flames, recorded August 13, 2014, in the exhibition.

On view concurrently at the Ryerson Image Centre, What It Means To Be Seen: Photography and Queer Visibility will focus on how photographs have brought to light the collective characteristics, experiences and ambitions of queer communities. This exhibition is also curated by the AGO's Sophie Hackett and will be on view at the RIC from June 18 to August 24, 2014.

This exhibition is included with general admission.