Mars Hill gallery spotlights 8 local LGBTQ+ artists in exhibit to run through Oct. 28

MARS HILL - The latest Mars Hill University art installation at Weizenblatt Gallery features the work of trans and nonbinary artists artists, specifically their experience in the South.

The exhibit, "Expansion," delves into themes of community, resilience, identity, and empowerment and hopes to invite viewers to explore the multifaceted aspects of the trans and nonbinary experience in the South.

The exhibit opened Oct. 4 and is being orchestrated by Southern Equality Studios, a Campaign for Southern Equality program that explores how the arts can be a catalyst and force in achieving lived and legal LGBTQ+ equality across the South, according to its website.

Since its launch in 2011, Campaign for Southern Equality has worked at the intersections of personal narrative and political organizing, working with LGBTQ+ people and families to share the stories of their lives, whether through the written word, film, or photography.

Weizenblatt Gallery director Skip Rohde, who has served as gallery director since 2017, said he was happy to have the "Expansive" exhibit.

"When I choose the shows for the year, every one of them is very different from the one before and after," said Rohde. "We had the dolls first this year. The LGBTQ show right now about social issues. The next one is going to be a tromp l'oeil exhibit."

Liz Williams is Southern Equality Studios' creative director.

Williams said she hopes the exhibit will help bring representation for LGBTQ+ residents in Madison County and the surrounding areas.

"We need diverse voices reflected in the arts, especially folks who have been pushed to the margins in the LGBTQ community, and then to bring it to a smaller town, I think is really powerful for the folks who are living in this community who don't feel like they have any voices or reflections that are similar to their own identity," Williams said. "To be featured in this space, I think is really powerful, especially because it's a part of the university. Just seeing how art can grow as being a catalyst for progress is something that I'm really excited about with having it here."

Establishing that representation for trans/nonbinary artists and residents was what sparked Williams to help form meetups at Asheville's Revolve Gallery, which helped lay the groundwork for "Expansive."

"Our goal was to connect with queer and trans creatives because we couldn't easily say off the top of our head any queer and trans creatives that we personally knew," Williams said. "So, we made that a goal to connect with different people and to have work that reflects this collaborative effort to connect with these creatives."

But once COVID hit, these get-togethers at Revolve were forced to move to a virtual setting, which is where Williams was first introduced to Brennan/Connie Page Henshaw, "Expansive's" artist in residence.

"I think 'Expansive' gets at what a lot of queer and trans people are saying and experiencing in their existence of liberation of self, the breaking down of boxes that have been put onto us," Henshaw said. "I think 'Expansive' is a great word for this exhibit because it shows how the people involved in the show, as well as the artists and their work, is ever-infinite and expansive."

Henshaw's artistic path started as a musician, where they performed as a singer/songwriter and played guitar, banjo and drums.

"I started out more as a nature/landscape/night sky photographer, and then for the past five years, I've been a portrait photographer. I've been lucky to do that as a business and work with a lot of queer and trans people," Henshaw said of their business, Lady in the Mirror Photography.

Williams works mostly with photography, graphic design and some illustration.

"With my work, I've been trying to traverse the human condition within myself, just kind of navigating mental health, as well as how I feel my identity is reflected, and also how I feel personally about my identity," Williams said. "I've taken that mindset and try to bring it to other folks that I'm photographing.

"With my graphic design, I got started with Campaign for Southern Equality because I created some commission pieces for their Pride collection in 2018. I would say that my work started to get more political around 2016, when I created a design that was in protest to HB2, and we made T-shirts that said, 'Don't Legislate Hate.'

In addition to Henshaw and Williams, other artists include Kass Patterson, SamLevi Middleton-Sizemore, Xocean Alexandre Dumas, Phoebe Yoder, Juliana Maurer, Holland Ninh and Vinny Verburg.

"I have collected local and regional archives of trans ancestors in our area, and some of them are not specific to our area," said Patterson, who pulled work from the Buncombe County special collections, UNC Asheville special collections, as well as the Library of Congress and the Digital Transgender Archives.

"The empty boxes are representation of the erasure of trans histories and archives, specifically BIPOC histories," Patterson said, referring to Black, Indigenous and people of color.

In their research, Patterson discovered former Asheville resident Holly Boswell created the trans symbol in 1993.

"She also created a retreat in the mountains called Kindred Spirits, where transgender people from all over the country would come and gather, and it started with the Phoenix support group," Patterson said. "It was one of the first transgender support groups, and like the biggest in the Southeast."

Boswell died in 2017, but Williams and Henshaw hope that with artists such as Patterson telling their stories, the work will continue to inspire younger generations.

"My goal was to center trans artists and their expressions. Simply that, and for people to feel seen and heard in a time when it can feel that our spaces are constricting, are being lessened," Henshaw said. "My goal was really for everyone to feel that they have a space to express the wholeness of themselves, and not just the part of themselves that's being particularly attacked right now, but all of ourselves – our joy, our struggles, our fear, what we love – and in that way, I do hope that comes through for people.

"I hope that they're able to connect and see the humanity in all of us through that art."

Henshaw, who moved to Asheville from Richmond, Virginia, said their mother and other family members will be attending the exhibit, which runs through Oct. 28.

"I think this is going to be really impactful for them, for their journey and being an ally," Henshaw said. "I do hope that can happen for different folks, and I also hope that trans people that come to the exhibit are going to just feel empowered to be able to be in a space surrounded by lots of queer folks in Mars Hill in a big, beautiful gallery."

Williams said she hopes trans residents can connect with one another, too.

"I'm really excited to see how creating this environment can open up some more doors for people and bring more hope," Williams said. "I just hope that people get lit up and they feel more emboldened to show themselves and live fully in their identity and their body and connect with community and resources."

The Southern Equality Studios creative director said she hopes it will provide perspective for residents across the spectrum.

"I hope the show will challenge people to open up their minds and imagination and to look outside of how they might identify and realize in a world that's full of so many struggles, we are not the enemy, whatsoever," Williams said. "We are your neighbors. We are your family. We are your friends. The only agenda that we have is that we want to live with equal rights as anybody else. We don't want any special treatment. We want our rights."

Ultimately, according to Henshaw and Williams, a goal of the exhibit is to provide trans artists a safe space to be themselves.

"The goal is just to be ourselves, and that's it," Henshaw said. "To be free to be ourselves, to be be safe to be ourselves. To have access to health care. To have access to community. Just all the things that every wants. To be able to have families. To be able to hold jobs. To be able to create art. To be able to be in faith spaces. To be all the aspects of human that everybody is."

"No matter how people identify, we just want a warm, safe space to exist. We just want safety," Williams said.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Mars Hill gallery spotlights 8 local LGBTQ+ artists in exhibit