Anyone interested in the question of where queer artistic representation stands today should see “Strange Bedfellows.” I deliver this recommendation not because I think this show will thrill minds and conquer hearts, but because, in its sometimes hesitant and sometimes even problematic ways, this traveling collection of collaborative work manages to be evocative rather than simply declarative. It leaves open the many questions it raises: What do we mean by queer art today? Who makes it? Do we still need it?
We Do!, a video by Annie Sprinkle and her wife, Elizabeth Stephens, makes one wish the 90s would stop returning. Sprinkle is most well-known for public performances advocating on behalf of porn and sex work, and her flamboyant, buxom playfulness—one of her pieces involved inviting audience members to view her cervix—seemed, in times past, at least interesting. Here Sprinkle and her partner are shown marrying each other 16 times, in rituals that encompass every form of cultural appropriation: Native American headdresses, cringe-inducing pagan rituals. The point about this as a performance is unclear—jointly staging various marital customs is hardly more than a private contract being performed publicly. The fact that the rituals are often highly sexual (there is a great deal of cervix peering and nudity) says nothing new about the institution of marriage itself.
Through 2/22 Columbia College Chicago, Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery 619 S. Wabash
colum.edu/adgallery free
