Hill Country Galleria gallery to host Pride pop-up market featuring local LGBTQ artists
Local artists collective Contracommon is hosting a pop-up market in the Hill Country Galleria with LGBTQ vendors to celebrate Pride month this year.
The market will be open June 18 from 3-6 p.m. and coincide with the closing celebration for the art show Hysteria, which explores themes of gender and identity.
Kelsey Baker, the development director and a studio member at Contracommon, which is based in Bee Cave, said the collective’s space will also be open to visitors during the pop-up. The space attracts artists from the Austin area and supports them in their craft, Baker said.
“We'll have a selection of vendors at the market selling a variety of things,” she said. “We'll have a bunch of tents set up outside of our gallery space. We'll also have a representative from Jolt Action registering people to vote. The Little Gay Shop will have a presence, and then Pride Vodka will be providing some refreshments as well.”
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Visitors also will be able to check out Hysteria, which showcases mixed-media pieces from Dallas-based artists Molly Margaret Sydnor, and has been in the works for over a year. Sydnor said when her show was scheduled for June she pitched the idea of hosting a closing event along with a Pride market to bring together the LGBTQ community around the arts.
Sydnor said her show questions womanhood and how girls and women are raised to understand femininity, masculinity and gender. The root of the word “hysteria” is the Greek word for uterus and the outdated medical diagnosis of hysteria was most often applied to women.
“The work is questioning womanhood, questioning how we are raised, what we're told. The work is all encompassing about what feminine means versus what being masculine means,” she said. Hysteria is about transgression, the growth from childhood to adulthood and what we teach girls, what we learn as girls and how we experience being female presenting whether we identify as women or not.”
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Sydnor said her work is often community oriented and she wanted an opportunity to bring together LGBQT groups and people from both Dallas and Austin for her show and the market.
“The market is going to have a lot of local talented artists and makers. It’s a Pride pop-up so it’s queer focused,” she said. “I'm really excited to see who comes. But also I'm super excited for the collaborative partners. I loved working with Contracommon. They're amazing. And not only do they have an amazing space, but they have a really great community of artists. ... I'm excited for Pride Vodka to come down to Austin and to see local queer Dallas and local queer Austin joining forces.”
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Baker said she is most excited for new people to discover Contracommon.
“Contracommon is a space that supports artists of all backgrounds, all identities,” she said. “We want to make as many opportunities as possible for as many people as possible, especially those that are underserved.”
Sydnor wants people to engage with her work with an open mind and experience it with a full range of emotions.
“I really want people to learn something,” she said. “I want people to really sit with it. I want it to linger ... It's supposed to be relatable to everybody, but also like, everybody's gonna sit with it a little bit differently depending on how they've walked through life.”
This story has been updated to correct Molly Margaret Sydnor's last name.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Bee Cave Gallery to host Pride pop-up market with LGBTQ artists
