haven
Adrien Crossman, utopia, 2019, neon sign | Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Adrien Crossman
Project Room
March 5–May 11, 2024
Step into haven, infused with references to queer social spaces and histories. Dismantling the barriers between the digital and the physical, Adrien Crossman plays with the intersection between ‘real life’ queer bars and those from fictional media. haven invites us to take refuge in the memories of queer bars past - many of which no longer exist for queer women and trans folks - while honouring imagined spaces that live on indefinitely through film and tv.
PARALLEL PROGRAMMING
WRITING IN PRACTICE: writing for institutions + established publications
Saturday, March 2, 11:30am–12:30pm
ARTIST STATEMENT
haven explores the idea of the queer bar as sacred space. One enters through black velvet curtains and arrives in an environment that recalls both the back room and the dance floor of a gay bar. Hyper realistic renders of neon signs referencing fictional gay bars hang on the walls, while scenes of queer clubs in media play on loop.
Photos courtesy of Chris Miner
Crossman is interested in the intersection between fictionalized queer spaces in media and the ghosts of many ‘real life’ queer bars past. These works traverse time and space, existing at once ‘nowhere’ and ‘now here.’ In addition to queering the binaries between the digital and the physical, haven blurs the division between fiction and reality by memorializing imagined queer spaces that can and do act as virtual stand ins for the ‘real’ gay bars we can no longer access – whether due to the pandemic or to the ongoing closures of clubs that have predominantly catered to queer women and trans folks. Without having a fixed temporal state or particular location, these fictionalized queer spaces live on indefinitely through their media, allowing us to visit them over and over again.
ADRIEN CROSSMAN
Adrien Crossman is a queer and non-binary white settler artist, educator, and curator currently residing on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe in Hamilton, Ontario. They hold an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Windsor (2018), and a BFA in Integrated Media with a Minor in Digital and Media Studies from OCAD University (2012). Crossman is interested in the affective qualities of queerness, investigating how queerness can be felt through specific aesthetics and sensibilities. Their work is deeply enmeshed with their queer and trans identity and is attentive to the ways that white supremacy and colonization have shaped dominant understandings of gender and sexuality. Through their practice, Crossman seeks to destabilize these systemic ideas and propose more expansive futures. In addition to having exhibited across Canada and internationally, Adrien co-founded and co-runs the online arts publication Off Centre. Crossman is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University.
THANKS + ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Union Gallery extends sincere thanks to the Provost's Advisory Committee on the Promotion of the Arts at Queen's University for supporting haven and affiliated programming through the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund. The artist would like to acknowledge the funding from the Ontario Arts Council.