What is ‘queer art’? Is it art produced by people who identify themselves as queer? Or is it art concerned with issues related to gender, identity politics and human rights? India, which has a rich history of art celebrating gender and sexual pluralism, is having to develop a new idiom of queer art in these deeply prejudiced times. In an exhibition titled Learn Togetherness: Sensing Art through Queer Lensing, the Kolkata Centre for Creativity made an effort to bring together artists to explore and understand better the role of art in questioning the hegemonic and oppressive social norms while reclaiming non-normative spaces beyond binaries.
Unfortunately, while a few artists like Anunay Rai and Anup Let produced some interesting pieces that strive to look past the obvious markers of gender plurality, most others failed to break free from cliched representations of queerness. There is much more to queerness than rainbows and desire.