Among Dreams honors the voicing and traces the invisible histories of LGBTQI Veterans and Active Duty Members through short experimental films, photographic portraits, quilt-work, text-based art and collages. Works incorporate new, appropriated and archival materials to interpret and explore interviews conducted since 2011 by the artist herself with active duty soldiers and veterans across the U.S. Oral histories combined with soldiers’ nighttime dreams offer a visceral palette to re-form a landscape largely inhabited but widely unseen.
The 2011 repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell disrupted a history of imposed silencing on our LGBTQI service members; the opening reception of Among Dreams will be held on the anniversary of this repeal offering an intentional witnessing of and inquiry into stories that have only recently become a visible and audible part of our record, but have always been integral to the fabric of our whole human story.
The audience is thus invited to consider what it means to have essential parts of your person, i.e. your humanity, ordered silent and what it means, equally, to have an order of silence that has been placed upon your human rights repealed.
Among Dreams has been made possible by the generous support of The San Francisco Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Granting Program’s Individual Artist Commission, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, The Center, and Intersection for the Arts. Event sponsorship by Lagunitas Brewing Company and Duckhorn Wine Company.
Trigger warning: complex, mature event topics include hiding, PTSD, the body memory, sexual assault, covering, violence, and the residual impact of forced silencing.