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*Image courtesy of Audrey Jang
‘The Queer Arts Display’, by my project partner in G12, is a multimedia art showcase down in the tent plaza the first week back in school after the October break, led by PRISM and Epiphany. It is meant to educate and bring awareness to what it means to be queer in UWC, in Singapore and in this society. It’s never been done before. I’m hoping that it will gain enough traction to be a yearly event because, frankly, it’s important.
LGBT rights in UWC is something that we like to talk about in TOK and in PSE during tutor group time but, truthfully, you can tell that it does little when the closeted gay kid that might be sitting next to you in History still has to suffer a mini panic-attack as the boys across the room throw around gay slurs.
So I organised the Queer Arts Display.
The concept is this: People make their art align with the theme of “LGBT” in any way they can and want (within reason), they submit their art, and then we display it. It’s healthy, fun and relatively simple.
But even to create a queer activism event as simple as this required a lot of convincing. I didn't anticipate the amount of concern people would have over Junior School students seeing the display. There’s still this idea that LGBT themes aren’t appropriate for young children. It's strange to think that the concept of two people (even if they are of the same sex) loving each other is scandalous and inappropriate, and yet children are so easily exposed to violence, war, and death from early childhood. As children, we all saw Scar plot Mufasa’s death in “The Lion King” and the entire colonialism allegory in “Tarzan.” Even as pre-teens, we all watched the Hunger Games as if watching 24 kids forced to kill each other for the entertainment of others was a common thing.
So why is it our parents let us be exposed these, but anything remotely LGBT becomes taboo?
I like to think that the way this event will represent gay people will be able to change the way people see LGBT themes; it is not just a political movement or a new millennial concept. It is people - human people - who have always been around, always suffered, trying to use their right to life to the fullest extent.
I think it’s time that all humans having the right to life, liberty, and happiness stops being a taboo concept and becomes something worth creating art about.
Join PRISM and Epiphany in the Queer Arts Display as soon as today! Submit your LGBT themed art pieces at goo.gl/SqfYu3. Physical works can be left in Gary Sestons's office in the HS Office.