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ucsfhealth.org/lgbtq-care feminist taking back of the craft tied me back to my matrilineal influence,” he said.

Taking his curator eye to fiber and textiles, Chaich found himself continually asking, “Why are so many queer artists drawn to this medium? What’s so queer about threads for artists and their practice?”

“I don’t think I have the answer yet, but it’s one of the core curiosities that drives my own attachment in exploration of the project,” he said.

He’s found through “Queer Threads” that audiences respond to the materials being used and how the artists are using those items to craft their artwork.

“I think the way that queer artists are working with fiber and textile to ask questions about our identity, politics, interactions, and relationships, and the spaces we make and try to change, strikes a real chord with audiences,” he said. That “particularly through the medium that seems really intimate, inspiring, and connecting, but still somehow critical, and eye opening for many audiences.”

One example is Lola Corona’s “Lacing, 2007.” The knit boxing gloves play with femininity and masculinity, taking a tool used in a violent sport inspired by her youth and turning it into something feminine and warm.

“They didn’t want to necessarily punch somebody with it,” Corona, a 37-year-old bisexual transgender Latina, said of a pair of red and black gloves created for guests to interact with at a previous exhibit. “They wanted to rub their face against it.”

The black and red gloves, which are a part of the series, aren’t a part of this exhibit. The cream and brown gloves will be on display, said the San Franciscobased artist, speaking with the B.A.R. in a video call from London where she was on a trip doing research for an embroidery program she started in January.

The exhibit

Chaich is excited about this iteration of “Queer Threads” and working with Bay Area artists – many of whom work at California College of the Arts –whom he’s admired for years from afar in New York, he told the B.A.R.

“This is the first time these works are being shown together this way,” he said, and the themes that are emerging are forming “a real kind of healing arc in this version of the exhibition.”

Chaich said the works explore violence against transgender women, the Pulse nightclub massacre, the impact of HIV/AIDS on Black and Brown men, as well as pop culture and the community’s campiness, joy, and playfulness.

The exhibit also shows “how we heal through that and still can envision a sense of a queer future,” he said.

It was important for Chaich to connect the exhibit with the Bay Area’s rich culture and history of social justice and honor the AIDS quilt’s birthplace in San Francisco.

“It was important to me to ... keeping that regional reference alive as a reminder of the role of how much activism [and] cultural production was born here and how it’s inspired global movements,” he said.

New artists, works

The exhibit is filled with many new works and new artists who haven’t participated with “Queer Threads” before, and there are also some artists who have been with the exhibit from the beginning, but are showing new works, Chaich said.

One of the new works in the exhibit is “Secrets of Greenmont West, 2019” by collaborative RoCoCo, comprised of San Jose native gay Latinx artist Modesto Covarrubias and Oakland-based ally artist KC Rosenberg. The textile painting is the only one that explores San Jose history and queer identity.

Covarrubias, 56, was born and raised in East San Jose, but now lives in Berkeley. His family moved to the Greenmont West housing development in the 1970s, which became the subject of RoCoCo’s piece in the exhibit. The artwork was created during the team’s 2017 residency at the museum.

The work explores heteronormativity in the planned community built for nuclear families, yet an unspoken queerness in his Mexican American family was all around Covarrubias with

LGBTQ aunts, uncles, and cousins who simply existed but their queer existence was not spoken or named, he said.

Covarrubias said he moved away from San Jose when he was 17 years old, finding LGBTQ community in Berkeley and San Francisco. It was only through accidental discovery and returning home through creating the artwork decades later that he rediscovered how queer his family is, and always was, in the middle of a straight Latino world.

“None of it is at the forefront. It all kind of reveals itself through the making, but it isn’t made because of all of that,” he said. “I had to rediscover it and then also rediscover it within my own family, not realizing the cues of certain things within my family.

“You can leave home and never come home again. You get to rediscover it in a way and learn so much and realize that you had all this support without realizing it,” said Covarrubias about returning with new eyes and understanding.

The piece also addresses natural resources. The community was built above natural aquifers on former Indigenous land. It was also an agricultural hub, as Silicon Valley was once known as the “fruit basket” of the country before it became the heart of innovation.

San Jose, the Bay Area’s largest city, is also the more conservative neighbor to San Francisco and Oakland, which are more progressive, Covarrubias noted. Having the local museum host “Queer Threads” is a sign of San Jose’s changing social landscape.

“San Jose has always been super conservative compared to those two other cities as far as social structures,” Covarrubias said, stating it is important that the exhibit opens in the South Bay. “I think we’ve seen that change too.”

California Humanities is supporting the exhibit. Outgoing Executive Director Julie Fry said they liked that the exhibit had locally based artists participating, particularly Covarrubias, and also was “expanding the voice” of the LGBTQ community.

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Volume 53, Number 20 May 18-24, 2023 www.ebar.com

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