Kolkata Queer Arts Month

Is a gallery, by definition, made up of a series of exclusions? The word ‘ghetto’ does come to mind, but that is surely too brazen a metaphor. Especially when one is embarking on conceptualising an arts month! Yet, queerness is so hyper-aware of being relegated to ghettos, real or metaphorical, that queer arts practitioners cannot but help be troubled by this question.While it might be a bit hasty to think of galleries as merely exclusionary spaces, the fact remains that particular notions of gender, class, caste, race and taste are necessary structural elements that define what gets demarcated as a gallery space.

And so begins a series of otherings - arts vs. crafts, artists vs. artisans, curators vs. practitioners, queer vs. mainstream and so on.

Queer and trans individuals across intersectional lines of class, caste and gender have had to constantly renegotiate their experience of urban spaces as attempts at progressive legislations have clashed and warred with ghettos of the human mind. This winter bears witness to a time of deep crisis and a loss of faith in structures - moral, legal, cultural et al. Ghosts of the past, buried for so long, refuse to remain hidden anymore, clamouring for acknowledgement and accountability. For many queer, trans and non-binary individuals this has confronted them with a fundamental conundrum - the City vs. the many other cities that exist in its interstitial spectral spaces, unknown and unseen by most.

A splintered city where people take to the streets in righteous anger demanding justice while at the same time numerous instances of violence and hate directed at LGBTQIA+ individuals don’t even make news.

Queerness has never had a healthy relationship with oppressive binaries and it is this very realisation that foregrounds what we wish to do with Ko:QAM 2.0 this time. 

Can this conversation about artistic ghettos succeed without recalibrating our notions of the very city where this exercise is to take place?

Through these interventions we will try to renegotiate our relationship with established gallery spaces as well as examine our bond with the eponymous city from which we draw our name, to try and tease out the various contradictory connotations that make up the urban experience in an age of constant digital reproduction.