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Abstract
The definition of ‘museum’ has changed, though some prefer to cling to that of a hundred years ago. The tension between what a museum is and what it does will continue, because the relationships and discourses we build among objects, communities and spaces remain dynamic as those same elements transform. Highlighting certain voices from museology and queer theory, this article tells the brief history of the Museo Q in Colombia. This museum, recognised as such by national cultural authorities, has no walls or extensive collections. Thus, its architecture is sometimes temporal, sometimes itinerant, sometimes transmutable. Considering its particular relationship with time and space, this article imagines a museology in motion, a museology that values emotion, failure, contingency, and movement: a museology in motion for an alternative future.
Notes
1 This article incorporates some of the reflections previously mentioned at two conferences in 2019: Sites Queer: Technologies, Spaces, and Otherness in Puerto Rico and at ALMS: Queering Memory in Berlin. In addition, like most Museo Q projects, it contains ideas that are indivisible from the whole team. I especially wish to thank Mario Henao for his previous reading, as well as my other colleagues at Museo Q: Andrés Montoya, Luis Manjarrés and Diana García.
2 In addition to art exhibitions, other LGBTQI+ cultural practices have recently emerged in Colombia ranging from dance (House of Tupamaras 2017) to literature (the Secret Fire reading club or the Closet Books initiative 2015) and cinema (Kuir-Fest Festival 2015). Other noteworthy initiatives that have unearthed LGBTQI+ archives include Colombia Trans History, the ABC of Drag Art, the Arkhé Foundation queer archive and the Gay Bambuco Folklore Festival Group.
3 Part of this collection was donated to the Museo Q in 2012 by Edwar Hernández, one of the most active members of REDDES.
4 In 2015, in the historical memory report entitled Aniquilar la diferencia (Annihilating Differences), the National Centre for Historical Memory reported 1,795 LGBTQI+ victims of the armed conflict. In 2018, Colombia Diversa and Caribe Afirmativo affirmed that the legal recognition of rights has not had a significant impact on the decline of violence against LGBTQI+ people. These organisations counted 109 deaths in 2017 alone.
5 The first appearances of Museo Q on the public stage were lectures at academic events. The first was at the University of the Andes (II International Meeting of Critical Studies on Political Transitions: Everyday life as a Problem for Peace. Panel: Truth and Memory in Political Transitions from a Perspective of Gender and Sexuality 2014) and the second at the Quinta de Bolivar Museum-House (Colloquium: Affect and emotion in Museums 2015).
6 The artists participating in Lo que se ve no se pregunta in 2016 were: Guillermo Camacho, Laboratorio Acciones Diversas (Claudia Chona, Felipe Chona y Daniel Roncancio), María Paula Durán, Juan Moreno, Ángela Navarro López, Juan David Quintero, Rommel Rojas and Luis Sebastián Sanabria.
7 The artists participating in Lo que se ve no se pregunta in 2018 were: Mario Alario, Daniel Álzate, David Anaya, Sebastián Angulo, Verónica Armijo, Alejandra Chaparro, Laboratorio Acciones Diversas, María Paula Durán, Yennyffer Flórez, Victoria Holguín, Paul Sebastián Mesa, Felipe Moreno, Juan Moreno, Ángela Navarro López, Juan David Quintero and Luis Sebastián Sanabria.
8 The artists participating in Lluvia de Sobres in 2017 were: Mario Alario, David Anaya, Stephanie Ascanio, Ricardo Avendaño, Andrea Barragán, Paola Calderón, Colectivo Desbordadoræs (Alejandra Fonseca, Ángel Gamboa, Javier Hidalgo, Sandro Londoño y Juan Salamanca), Colectivo Macabra (Madorilyn Crawford y Manu Mojito), Jordi Martínez, Paul Sebastián Mesa, Andrés Rodríguez, Daniel Salamanca Núñez, Juan Pablo Pacheco, Julián Urrego, Yorely Valero and Sebastián Villamil.
9 An important reference for Leer las flores was the Green Porno series by Isabella Rossellini.
10 Chuquy Club de Dibujo (Chuquy Drawing Club) is an initiative from the artist Ricardo Avendaño, who invites different people to model for drawing workshops, celebrating trans bodies, fat bodies, black bodies and bodies with disabilities.
11 The illustrations for the Medellín Botanical Garden are from Lisa Anzellini. Technical advice for the booklet and interactions was provided by Jorge Lopez, a biologist specialised in botany.
12 At the end of 2019, the British Council published the first issue of the magazine El Alto entitled ‘Gender, Sexuality, and the Arts in the Americas’, which included a note on Leer las flores.
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Notes on contributors
Michael Andrés Forero Parra
Michael Andrés Forero Parra completed a B.Arch (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia) and an MA in Art Museum and Gallery Studies (University of Leicester, UK) before joining the Curatorial Research Collective (TU/e) PhD programme. He coordinated the development of the Museum of Memory in Bogotá, assisted several community museums throughout Colombia, and co-founded Museo Q. In addition, he developed the renovation plan for Casa Bermúdez, a Heritage House that is part of MoMA's architecture collection. He has received grants from the Getty Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Tate Modern, and the Smithsonian NMAAHC. Recently, his work has appeared in Bitácora Arquitectura (2020), Museum Activism (2019) and OASE (2017).