Chicago’s Queer Art History Takes Center Stage at MCA’s “City in a Garden”

Though Pride Month has come to a close, queer artistry lives on. Case in point: “The City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago,” an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in the heart of downtown. The exhibit, curated by assistant curator Jack Schneider and curatorial assistant Korina Hernandez, explores the often untold stories of queer resistance through the lens of Chicago’s history, spanning multiple generations. As it approaches its one-year anniversary on July 5, the exhibit features the work of 30 artists and collectives whose pieces weave together the story of Chicago’s queer history, from the 1980s to the present day.

“These artists address queerness through diverse media and methods,” the installation’s official description on the MCA website states. “They document clandestine queer spaces in photographs, create sculptures that challenge normative depictions of gender and sexuality, and explore queer intimacy through drawings, paintings and videos.”

The showcase features numerous works that collectively display the influence of Chicago’s queer community across a multitude of media; the quantity of selected works pales in comparison to the breadth of possibilities, according to Schneider.

“The biggest challenge I faced in assembling the exhibition was narrowing down the list of artists,” Schneider told I-M Magazine. “This show could have easily been twice its size — a testament to how Chicago has been a major, if undervalued, site of queer cultural production for at least the last half-century.”

Like the LGBTQ+ community it reflects, the exhibit is larger than life. Its expansiveness over several decades is segmented into five themes that illustrate the reach of Chicago’s queer community across various facets of the city’s culture. The themes include Garden, Club, Street, Theater and Utopia, which together form a pseudo-map, demonstrating how queer culture is embedded throughout the city. According to Schneider, the installation is curated so that, regardless of whether visitors identify as LGBTQ+, it inspires a sense of pride rooted in camaraderie and acceptance.

“Whether queer or not, visitors can move through the exhibition and feel proud that they live in a city that people flock to,” Schneider told Newcity Art. “It is a place for people who might not fit normative molds in the places they came from, because they feel supported here.”

The exhibition, featuring prominent artists of color such as Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal, Patric McCoy and Chiffon Thomas, runs through Aug. 16.

For more information, visit https://visit.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/city-in-a-garden-queer-art-and-activism-in-chicago/.