Queer Art: Where is the Queer Joy?

Too often we dwell on the negatives of history’s LGBTQ artists, dark stories, pain, and repression. We have like Keith Haring, who sadly died of AIDS, Basquiat, who died of drug abuse. Not just in the visual arts but across different art forms. But look closer and queer joy can be found, sometimes explicit, but sometimes in the abstract. Flowers, landscapes, colours and domestic scenes. So how do we find and illuminate this work? And why is it so important that we do? In this new series of three films, Not Seeing Straight: Celebrating Queer Art and Lives, we LGBTQ explore artists and their artworks. Since legal changes have in recent decades made the lives of queer people more open and free, so too has the art produced by LGBTQ plus artists. The world of queer arts opened up, becoming bolder, louder and more mainstream. Narrated by Afton Moran Produced by National Galleries of Scotland and HeeHaw Special thanks to: Glasgow Women’s Library Equality Network Ru Jazz