The multi-media exhibition, website, and a publication is comprised of work by 37 post-OUT/LOOK queer writers, artists, activists, performers and curators producing new works in response to a particular issues of OUT/LOOK magazine.
In perusing the winter 1990 issue of OUT/LOOK: National Lesbian & Gay Quarterly Ace was struck by how much has changed within the LGBTQ community over the past decades with regard to identity definitions and self-expression. For example several of the works in issue 7 express anxiety about ascribing to, and performing within narrowly defined sexual identities as exemplified by Jan Clausen’s “What Does it Mean When a Lesbian Falls in Love with a Man?” and Jan Brown’s “Sex Lies and Penetration: A Butch Fesses up,” while today LGBTQ culture is engaged in making space for non-binary genders and we understand sexuality and gender as uncoupled, often fluid and ultimately self-defined. Meanwhile outside of LGBTQ communities nationalism, patriotism, racism, homophobia and transphobia seem to be continually enmeshed as demonstrated by Jackie Goldsby’s writing reflecting on U.S. politics, and artist Gene Wesley Elder’s art work using the U.S. flag both of which underscore a great uneasiness around legislation and dominant cultural perceptions impacting LGBTQ lives which very much mirror present day politics.