(via Gladys Bentley) a better pic.

vintageblackglamour:

gray37:

Courtney Gillette (via The real lives of celesbians | AfterEllen.com)

Way before Janelle Monae made cute suits her signature, or Lady Gaga was flaunting her alter ego Jo Calderone, there was Gladys Bentley, flirting and singing the blues in men’s clothing during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance.

Why no one has paid Betley homage with a proper documentary or biography is baffling to me. She wasn’t just into women (gossip columns were all a twitter when Bentley married a white woman in Atlantic City), she was an openly lesbian performer, who sang the blues not only at rent parties and speakeasies but at well known gay establishments. As for her style and preference for suits (and top hats! Homegirl rocks a top hat like nobody’s business!), she later told Ebony magazine, “It seems I was born different. At least, I always thought so….From the time I can remember anything, even as I was toddling, I never wanted a man to touch me…Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys clothes than in dresses.”

The sad ending, though, came when Betley caved to the conservative pressures of the McCarthy era and “reformed,” marrying a dude, donning dresses, and saying she’d been cured. She also denounced her former ways as an effort to gain a mainstream audience, but that flopped. Gossip, style, blues, speakeasies, love affairs: Gladys Bentley’s life has the makings of some killer nonfiction. Who’s game?

Legendary 1930s blues singer Gladys Bentley. Openly lesbian, Bentley was the headliner at the Clam House, a gay and lesbian club on 133rd street in Harlem where she performed popular songs with double-entendre lyrics in top hat and tuxedo. 

I’ve wondered why she hasn’t received better recognition and queer homage to. Even allowing for the combined erasure of specifically lesbians, butch/bulldagger women and WOC in queer media, Bentley was just such an innovator socially and creatively, through such influential periods in queer history. Her story would appeal to just about any audience that aren’t far right haters.

*though she had accepted conservative public norms by the time of her death, so I dunno about the implications for intellectual property.

(via heyfatchick)

iamnotawomanartist:

“These are negatives that were scratched because of a jealous husband from the Baqari family, who never let his wife out by herself. He was upset to know that she came to be photographed in my studio without telling him. He came asking for the negatives. I refused to give them to him, because they were on a 35 mm roll. In the end we agreed that I would scratch the negatives of his wife with a pin, and I did it in front of him. Years later, after she burnt herself to death to escape her misery, he came back to me asking for enlargements of those photographs, or other photographs she might have taken without his knowledge.”

Akram Zaatari

(via Welcome to CherrieMoraga.com)

San Francisco, CA (December 7, 2011) – After a fifteen-year hiatus, Brava Theater is proud to welcome award–winning writer and director„ Cherríe Moraga, back to its stages to celebrate its 25th anniversary with the world premiere of her new play, New Fire – To Put Things Right Again.

Co-produced with cihuatl productions, and conceptually created and designed by Celia Herrera Rodríguez, this new work follows the sacred geography of Indigenous American mythologies to tell a 21st century story of rupture, migration and homecoming.  Countering new-age apocalyptic predictions for 2012, NEW FIRE takes a mythic and modern-day look at the conditions of our times.   The play follows one woman’s dreamscape ceremonial journey upon the eve of her birthday, expertly interweaving humorous encounters with tricksters and allies of every ilk who act as her guides on the road to remembering a stolen past.  New Fire will inspire and challenge its audiences to regain an American history erased in post-colonial textbooks.

The world premiere production runs January 11 – 29, 2012 at the Brava Theater (2781 24^th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110).

I’m so envious of anyone in SF who got to see this [review links pretty pls.??]. Guessing/hoping it’ll be performed elsewhere eventually though. 

(via Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » Assembling Stories: The Rubble Art of Dominique Moody)

Dominique Moody is a visual griot, an artistic storyteller whose imaginative use of found objects and rubble from the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere has propelled her into the front ranks of contemporary African American artists in the early years of the twenty-first century. Moody, whose major visual disability makes her legally blind, transforms trash into treasure by assembling the remains from architecture, tree branches, bottles, discarded shoes, and other everyday items into some of the most engaging artworks in the contemporary era. Her three-dimensional pieces explore her personal and family history that reflects her nomadic history from her birth in Germany in a military family through her odyssey of living at more than forty addresses in various locations throughout her fifty-four years.

Anastasia Klose has established a reputation for her ‘aesthetic of the pathetic’, drawing on the painful or humorous moments in her life to make videos. … Klose made Film for my Nanna 2006 in response to a question from her grandmother about her marriage prospects. A roughly-made sign reading ‘Nanna, I’m still alone’ was a last-minute addition to the bridal outfit but its poignant message gives the work its charge.

via Anastasia Klose ‘Film for my nanna’ 2006 | 21st Century Blog ‘Art in the First Decade’ | Gallery of Modern Art

the full video’s more empathetic to her Nana’s POV, and quietly beautiful, than reviews focused on the joking aspect suggest. it features Klose walking around Melbourne in the wedding dress, sometimes engaging with people, but often alone, incongruous gown emphasizing her solitude.

i really loved it. it’s refreshing to see Klose embody the socially discomforting figure of the man hunting, “still” single woman with self acceptance and generation bridging empathy, rather than desperation or anxiety. which sounds really 2nd wave. which it kind of is.

(via Barbara T. Smith, Feed Me)

During an event organised by the San Francisco Museum of Conceptual Art in which various male artists performed wreckless and macho gestures like drinking beer and peeing into a metal tub, Smith sat nude in an intimate space inviting audience members one at a time to ‘feed’ her. The room contained an oriental rug-covered mattress, a sink, incense, body oils, shawls, books and music. The artist offered tea, wine and marijuana that she could be fed in exchange for ‘conversation and affection’. In the background, a taped loop played “Feed Me, Feed Me” over and over again.

Smith has explained that the image she projected of herself reflected both the fantasy and the reality of femininity; by presenting herself as mother, courtesan and artist she opened up the possibility that all these identities can co-exist.

hyperallergic:

Queer Art Grows in Brooklyn

Queer arts have been gaining momentum and paying healthy homage to history as they take root in Brooklyn. On the heels of an eventful December with World AIDS Day events throughout the city, Illegitimate And Herstorical opened at A.I.R. Gallery on January 5. Curated by Emily Roysdon (a collaborator with MEN and a founder of “feminist genderqueer” artist collective LTTR), Illegitimate And Herstorical is one of the strongest group shows culled from open-call submissions that I’ve seen of late. READ MORE

(via girlsgetbusyzine)

Yayoi Kusama - Photo of Naked Protest at Wall St. 1968.

Called a protest but similar to the regular happenings Kusama held during her early years in New York.

Yayoi Kusama -Infinity Mirror Room 1965

Yayoi Kusama

bybabaoutlook:

Clark Sorensen Pink Orchid Urinal

(via Etta James, blues and R&B singer known for ‘At Last,’ dies - latimes.com)

Something’s Got A Hold On Me (by SassyGirrrl420) Etta James 1962

Lip A film collaboration between Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg 1999, 10 minutes, Color

It is Hollywood’s favorite role for black women: the maid. Sassy or sweet, snickeringly attentive or flippantly dismissive, the performers who play them steal every scene they are in, and Tracy Moffatt’s entertaining video collage reveals the narrow margin Hollywood has allowed black actresses to shine in. But shine they do. Giving lip is proven an art form in these scenes from 1930’s cinema to present-day movies featuring a remarkable roster of undervalued actresses and their more celebrated white costars. Moffatt and Hillberg’s rough, no-budget assembly effectively highlights with familiarity and humor the disturbing realization of how black characters and white characters still interact on screen, under Hollywood’s eternally backwards eye.

via WOMEN MAKE MOVIES | Lip