Queer Abstraction: Visual Strategies to See New Queer Futures
Abstract
Uganda’s anti-homosexuality laws are infamous. In 2014 and the years
preceding it there was a marked intensification in unsatisfactory legal structures,
and growing social debate surrounding how queer people can live their lives.
When the queer community is under increasing pressure to be silent, what is the
contribution of visual culture to the hearing of queer voices? There is currently a
heightened and intense aesthetic conversation emerging in Kampala. The quantity
of visual culture being produced—both celebrating and condemning queerness—is
increasing. This production is being driven by a myriad of sources: artists; media
and press houses; religious figures; governments; schools; universities; and medical
institutions. This production of culture lies alongside both an intensification and
fluctuation in homophobic laws—and social stigmas—regarding queer lives in
Uganda. Artists and audiences are dialoguing about queer aesthetics and making art
rigorously in response to this social and legal situation. With one artwork, produced
in 2014, as a focus, this essay explores abstraction as a visual tactic to communicate
through contexts of violence and homophobia. Despite media prominence and
academic attention on Uganda’s homosexual politics (Sadgrove 2012; Rao 2015;
Tamale 2011), the conflict has never been analyzed through a visual lens. In order
to apply new insights to this contemporary dilemma, this essay draws from and
contributes to the interdisciplinary field of queer visual culture, a discipline that
applies queer theoretical scrutiny to readings of contemporary visual culture and
the understanding of social change (Sanders 2007). What can we learn from the
visual representations of queerness that are being presented to us; if we squint hard
enough, are we able to visualize possibilities for new queer futures?
