Queering Digital

Co-curators Steve Galindo and Jamison Edgar are pleased to present: Queering Digital, a sprawling group exhibition at the West Hollywood Pacific Design Center. The exhibition features thirteen visual artists who collaborate with digital tools to trouble homophobic paradigms while amplifying the full range of queer and trans subjectivity. 

At its core, Queering Digital explores the social ramifications of digital technology through the lens of queer, trans, and non-binary artists working in Los Angeles. The exhibition serves as a contemporary addendum to traditional exhibitions on queer art history and creative resistance. Foregrounding the proliferation of digital platforms over the past twenty years, the exhibition asks how queer artists are engaging with their digital ecosystems. In turn, the exhibition introduces a range of techniques that artists use to record and transgress hybrid forms of identity as well as algorithms of optimization and control. Resisting co-opted narratives of queer visibility, the exhibition charts an alternative path that wrestles with the complex ways that digital queerness shapes broader social structure online and IRL (Away from the Keyboard).

The daily rituals of queer people offer us a unique perspective to better understand the entangled dynamics of these digital systems. Over time, queer individuals have used technology and media not only as tools for survival, but also as sources of radical liberation—transforming inanimate objects, ideas, and movements into powerful symbols of resistance and self-expression. From secret printing presses and word-of-mouth newspapers to the infamous "first brick" thrown at the Stonewall Riots, to cruising phone lines and anonymous web browsers, Queering Digital traces the myriad of ways that technology has been instrumental in shaping queer social movements in perpetuity. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to trace these digital echoes across a range of visual mediums and digital systems. The resulting exhibition invites visitors to consider how digital influences are migratory—how they travel across borders, impacting individuals and communities globally. It also poses critical questions about how technology can serve as a platform for activism and liberation, facilitating the creation of new forms of identity and community in a rapidly changing world.