The Red Tulips

Dustin Hall, American, born 1999

The Red Tulips, 2018

In this painting, Hall uses abstraction and color blocking to create an anthropomorphized landscape of queer figures. Painted on the back of a scavenged cardboard poster frame and hung with scrap wire, the painting contains two separate blocks of color, the upper block in yellow and the lower block in green. Within in each block, spirals of other colors swirl to create forms suggestive of penises, vaginas, breasts, and faces. Uniting and blurring the boundaries between the two blocks are three distinct, humanlike figures in white, black, and gray. The bodies which appear in the middle, with their combination of female and male primary and secondary sex characteristics, do not fit cisnormative understandings of biological femininity and masculinity. Just as the figures blur between the landscape and each other, so too do they blur between binary constructions of sex and gender. The abstraction of the lines in the lower half of the painting further enables this sexual and gender ambiguity. Phallic forms whirl into yonic forms which then whirl into breasts and faces and hands until each form is simultaneously recognizable and unrecognizable, disrupting biological binaries of sex and gender (as well as binaries separating humans and nature) to the point where such binaries become incomprehensible. The figure in the center of the painting grounds this chaos, signaling that an alternative to shaky models of binary gender resides in the transcendence of this binary in favor of a body that recognizes the fluidity of gender and sexual categories. Label by Maxwell Cloe

Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story

Beth Stephens, American

Annie Sprinkle, American

Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story, 2013

This image is a press photo from the film Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story. The film reflects the critical elements of the sacrifice zone: an abundance of natural resources that are exploited by a powerful capitalist entity that exports the wealth it extracts, leaving the region in poverty; limited visibility of slow violence; and severe consequences to health. At the same time, it highlights the activism that does exist. The exuberant scene set against the background of mountaintop removal destruction illuminates the intersection of environmentalism, queer identity, and artistic expression that guides both the film and the activism practiced by Stephens and Sprinkle. Environmentalism is reflected by the contrast between the stark background scene of the destroyed mountain top. Queer identity, especially where it includes ecosexuality, is represented by the erotic position of the two women amongst the bloom of flowers. Artistic expression as activism is at the core of the film; creator Stephens initiated the project with the intention of calling attention to the hushed exploitation of Appalachia. Label by Hannah London

Pangean Youth

Bob Morgan, American

Pangean Youth, 2011

Often overlooked in the field of ecologically conscious art is the art that works around environmentally harmful materials by reusing the refuse and detritus which surrounds the artist. In the case of Bob Morgan’s, a sculptor based out of eastern Kentucky, sculpture Pangean Youth, literal garbage and cheap objects found strewn about the trash heaps and dollar stores of Appalachian Kentucky become the material for a sculptural depiction of Morgan’s experiences as a gay man in the mountains. The sculpture depicts a blue baby doll surrounded by trash and cheap plastic sea creatures. A toy snake emerges from the doll’s right arm hole. On the other hand, the doll carries a sword. While this piece is not explicitly ecological in its content, its very construction—in which Morgan collects discarded objects from around him and adheres them together using adhesive—does not generate any new waste and, in fact, removes waste from his environment in order to create something beautiful. Label by Maxwell Cloe