Kitchen Table Diaries

Kitchen Table Diaries

We know about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera because of the shattering effect the Stonewall riots had - pulling the LGBTQ movement out of the societal closet and into visibility. “Out and Proud”, paving a way for every gay, trans and lesbian. To be seen as we are, instead of having us silenced into invisibility by “excusing” gay men as eternal bachelors, lesbians as spinsters and scolding, nay shaming trans people as fake woman and men. The pain and effort Butch women had to endure to become more feminine either by resisting or complying to a society’s seemingly eternal construct of heteronormativity.

The three books are a diary of collages with materials from Europe, Turkey and the U.S. which I collected and preserved on my kitchen table in the nineties and beyond. My memory about these times is fragmented which is reflected in the sparse and incomplete imagery and text bits. Where there is a gap of lost imagary or text a white space shows up. I used common cardboard to build the structure of the books to reflect the hand’s on, do-it-youself approach of those times.

As a double sided boustrophedon the books can be paged in both directions. Folded out, they turn into a two sided imagery, revealing the Alice Walker quote: No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended”. The quote is printed on pages from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Creating a book through such memory fragmentation aims in reconstructing a collective space that is no longer accessible and its protagonists hardly to be found in history books and internet searches. You have to know that such places, who often were and still are at the forefront of change, existed, before you can search for them or ask for stories about them should you end up sitting next to an actual eyewitness.

We won’t forget about our accoplishments as well as the many who have endured pain and isolation and - never forget – violent deaths by those who rather loved a god or an ideology than dared to love a fellow human being.

All those untold stories of brave queer people in underground bars and venues, kitchen table art making and printing, poetry performances and fierce “garage” bands were ways which often playfully allowed us to define ourselves; to alter our bodies in most creatives ways, and by doing so, to question the norm of gender roles. Considering plastic surgery meant exploring the possibility where a penis might be most handy instead of just “attaching” it to the expected place.

Our promiscuity to take matters in our own hands made us breathe, hope, love and lastly live.

Kitchen Table Diaries

2022, edition of 3, collages, paint, slides, plastic, ink on cardboard, boustrophedon

Size: folded 30 x 30 x 15cm, unfolded 120 x 90 x 1cm

Edition size: out of print

Institutional collectors: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek