Challenging Repression

Challenging Repression includes three visual art images, all of which in different ways explore the violences of censorship and self-censorship. The images feature cultural symbols evocative of the past, particularly the twentieth century, and of LGBTQIA+ culture. A common trope across all three images is the partial-to-complete erasure or distortion of human faces, which suggests the ways in which mainstream heteronormative histories have silenced those of LGBTQIA+ people. This silencing includes the silencing of mainstream culture’s violences against those who do not fit its norms, and may furthermore be considered a form of violence in and of itself.