DES MOINES, IA.- Queer Abstraction, the first exhibition in the Des Moines Art Center’s 70-year history to focus exclusively on queer subject matter, opened this weekend to coincide with the first day of Pride in the US.

The exhibition marks a substantial shift in the Art Center’s programming by purposely including queer voices that have largely been left out of art history. The exhibition was commended for The Sotheby’s Prize 2018 which is designed to support and encourage museums to break new ground by providing major support for exhibitions that explore overlooked or under-represented areas of art history.

For more than a century, many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer artists have turned to the language of abstraction to illustrate diverse facets of sexuality and gender. In response to specific struggles—such as the criminalisation of homosexuality, the Civil Rights Movement, and the AIDS crisis—queer artists have embraced abstraction to communicate their unauthorised desires and identities through an accepted mode of art. Marsden Hartley’s modernist portrait of his fallen lover, Louise Fishman’s queer feminist canvases, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s tender, conceptual works are but a few examples. Currently, abstract art that embodies this mode of expression has gained the moniker “Queer Abstraction,” and has become a growing aesthetic force during the present, unsettling era. Queer Abstraction unites contemporary artists who utilise the amorphous possibilities of abstraction to convey what it means to exist on the margins.

Artists include Math Bass, Mark Bradford, Edie Fake, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Harmony Hammond, John Paul Morabito, Carrie Moyer, Nicholas Hlobo, Sheila Pepe, Prem Sahib, Jonathan VanDyke, and Jade Yumang. The project also includes the commissioning of works by Elijah Burgher and Mark Joshua Epstein, and a new edition of artist Tom Burr’s large-scale sculpture Deep Purple.

Jeff Fleming, Director, Des Moines Art Center, said: “As the Des Moines Art Center strives to become more inclusive and welcoming to diverse audiences, we are committed to organising challenging and timely exhibitions to promote empathy and gain understanding of each other through the art of our time. The Sotheby’s Prize jury’s recognition of the exhibition supports these efforts and helps us to recognise the queer experience as a significant influence on modern and contemporary art.”

The exhibition is curated by the museum’s Assistant Curator Jared Ledesma.