CHMA previously interviewed two co-curators of Fruit Salad: A Series of Queer and Gender-Nonconforming Videos & Performances, Emily Falvey and Lucas Morneau.
The interviews were published on Friday, November 6th. Since then, the project has changed names.
The previous title contained the term “gender-critical,” which has since been changed to “gender non-conforming.”
The Owens and CHMA were alerted by the public that the term “gender-critical” has been co-opted by trans exclusionists, and is therefore transphobic.
In an apology statement by the co-curators, the three say the following regarding the use of the term:
“Fruit Salad was born of a desire to hold space for and celebrate LGBTQ2S+ culture and communities online and on campus at a time when safe community spaces are being eroded. We apologize unreservedly for any harm we have caused our transgender friends, audiences, and colleagues. Thank you for holding us to account and helping us out of our ignorance with kindness.”
The curatorial team for “Fruit Salad: A Series of Queer and Gender-Nonconforming Videos and Performances,” Hannah Bridger, Emily Falvey and Lucas Morneau.
With that context in mind, CHMA spoke with co-curator of the “Fruit Salad,” Hannah Bridger, to discuss the project.
MC: Could you describe your role in the Fruit Salad project specifically?
HB: Yeah, so I was one of the co-curators alongside Lucas and Emily. Together, we all worked to pick the artists and the videos. I also helped build the web page for Fruit Salad where you can watch it online, and got to reach out to some of the artists about the exhibition, which was really exciting.
MC: What’s the most exciting thing about this project, for you?
HB: I think for me, since this is like my first professional curating experience it was really exciting to be able to work with so many queer artists and put on an exhibition during a time where we’re kind of rethinking how to show art to the public. Being able to do it in such a fun way with so many great artists and works that were really important to me was a really awesome first job as a curator.
MC: Did you graduate in 2020?
HB: I did, yeah.
MC: Okay, I wasn’t sure. So you’re a recent graduate from Mount A Fine Arts. So that means that you’ve been presumably around Mount Allison and Sackville for four years…ish. Is that correct?
HB: Yep.
MC: Now that you’re not a student anymore, what do you think Mount Allison or the Sackville art community needs to stay current and engaging?
HB: I think that’s a really hard question right now, especially where everyone is kind of trying to rethink how to do art exhibitions and even how to like maintain an art practice. I know that’s something I’ve been having a hard time with for myself. I don’t know if there’s a good answer. I think there’s gonna be a lot of trial and error in terms of finding ways for artists in town and for students in town to still show their work. I mean, for my grad class, our graduate exhibition was cancelled because everything kind of shut down because of COVID, which was disappointing. I think that there’s a lot of people trying to come up with some alternate solutions for those types of problems.
MC: Sackville also recently saw the closure of T&L, or Thunder and Lightning, which was a queer-friendly venue for things like drag shows, or queer art, such as featured in “Fruit Salad.” Do you have any thoughts, especially since you’ve been here for four plus years, about spaces in Sackville where queer events and queer art can happen safely?
HB: Yeah. I mean, Thunder and Lightning was obviously a huge loss for the community, but I think in some ways it could be a good change. I think relying on a bar as the main queer venue and queer space in town isn’t always necessarily a good thing, because it is still a bar. Just because it’s a queer space doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a safe or comfortable space for everyone. I know, in the last couple of years, I had a number of uncomfortable experiences at the bar that led to me not really wanting to go there anymore. So I think even though it is such a big loss, I feel like queer folks will find a way to build spaces for themselves. I know there’s a lot of really great people and businesses in town, like Hounds of Vintage has been supporting queer artists for as long as they’ve been here. I’m sure that there are other spaces that would be totally welcome to hosting events or showing art by queer folks.
MC: Over the weekend, the project changed names. It changed the name from “Fruit Salad”… It had the word “gender-critical” in it to “gender non-conforming.” If you have anything that you want to say about that, you’re welcome to do that.
HB: So when we came up with the subtitle for the project, it was kind of reverse engineered out of what our goals were for the project. And because everything came together so fast, we didn’t get to do as much research into the wording of that as we should have. It was brought to our attention by some community members that “gender-critical” is a dog whistle for TERFs, which was totally not what we wanted to do with the exhibition and was not supposed to be a part of it at all. So it was really upsetting for all of us to realize that we have overlooked a detail like that in an exhibition that was supposed to be uplifting for queer folks in town. So there’s a statement that’s going to be issued today, and we are working on extending the exhibition to kind of address that issue.
MC: Is it certain that you’re going to extend it, or are you still talking about it?
HB: We’re still in conversation with the artists, we have to check in with everybody who was involved and make sure that they’re okay with the extension and sort out artist fees and that type of thing. But it is in the works, and we’re really hoping to extend it for another week.
Word of the project’s extension will be available on CHMA’s website once available, or at umbrellaprojects.ca.
