The second Mighty Real/Queer Detroit biennial opened tonight and runs through June 30. The exhibition, titled I'll Be Your Mirror: Reflections of the Contemporary Queer, fills 11 Detroit-area galleries with more than 800 works by over 170 artists. PBS NewsHour called it the first international queer art biennial.
Curator patrick burton, who styles his name lowercase, has been telling outlets he wants Detroit to become the city the art world comes to every two years for queer work. Burton, a longtime Detroit public school teacher, ran the inaugural biennial in 2022. That show was a 77-year sweep through Detroit LGBTQ+ art from 1945 to 2022.
The 2024 edition pushes outward, weighting the artist list toward national and international names, with the title borrowed from the Velvet Underground and Nico song. The Carr Center at the Park Shelton is one of the 11 venues, with Oliver Ragsdale Jr. opening the doors. The other galleries spread across Midtown, the Cass Corridor, and out toward the eastern neighborhoods.
The work covers painting, photography, sculpture, video, and performance. Specific pieces worth seeking out. Peter McGough's Faggot Bricks, a glazed brick reclaiming a slur and pointed at viewers as both attack and offering.
Felicita Felli Maynard's Ole Dandy, the Tribute, vintage-camera photographs reimagining a gender-expansive cabaret performer in the Harlem Renaissance. Mark A. Vieira's 1979 Portrait of Sylvester, the disco singer captured in an image Fantasy Records used uncredited.
Clarity Haynes's Alter for Tee Corinne. Bre'Ann White's Deity+ii. Alanna Fields, Lola Flash, Edie Fake, and Tylonn Sawyer also have work in the show.
A performance program runs the length of the biennial. Christeene, Stephanie Crawford, Linda Simpson, Pamela Sneed, and Cherry Wood are scheduled. The DIA theater is hosting a film series curated by Adam Baran.
Burton runs the biennial as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. He keeps repeating, in interviews, that anti-trans bills in state legislatures across the country make this work more relevant, not less. PBS reported that more than 500 LGBTQ-targeted bills had been introduced in state and local legislatures by mid-year. Cross-neighborhood, primarily Midtown and Cass Corridor.
