Nontraditional Family: Exploring Artistic Expressions Of Queer Love

This project focuses on queer love and the families which are formed by it. The purpose of this project is to collect and display art by and about queer family in order to draw attention to queer love in mainstream public and academic spaces. I define the term queer family as units of people that are bonded by commitment and love, but fall outside mainstream cis-, monogamous, and hetero-normative expectations. As for art, I define it as any act of creation which springs from expression of self, and/or human experience and emotion. As such, this project seeks to explore people who are bonded outside mainstream expectations via creative expression. In this project, I follow guidelines laid out by Bounia 2020 as the Ethics of Care in order to fulfill my understanding that the purpose of museums is to educate, and create and engage in conversations in order to better their educational intentions. My participants are Holli, and Zella and Mina. Holli submitted the song she wrote for the First Dance at her wedding, and Zella and Mina submitted their wedding photos. The project concludes with a discussion of the final design of the exhibition case, the common theme of marriage among participants' contributions, and by detailing how the project completes the Ethics of Care.