By Gabriella Payne
The City of Greater Dandenong is excited to be launching the community’s first-ever LGBTQIA+ Festival ‘Unwrapped’ later this month and as part of this, will be showcasing a range of local artworks from the queer community in a brand new online exhibition.
The exhibition, titled ‘Unwrapping our Rainbow Flag’ will run from Wednesday 25 November onwards and submissions are now open for aspiring local artists of all ages.
Doleen ‘Larra’ Juab, the exhibition team leader and business development manager at Connection Arts Space (CAS) said that the project aimed to be “as inclusive as possible” and provide a platform “for people to share their stories”.
The CAS team hopes that the exhibition will involve and reach out to a diverse cultural audience, particularly people from immigrant and refugee backgrounds living in Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs.
Artists have the option of choosing to enter in one of two categories; a visual art one or a written or textual based category.
“We are expecting to have a really diverse variety of answers, and we didn’t set up any rules at all, so even for the visual part – it could be an artwork, it could be spoken word poetry, it could be video, it could be dancing,” Ms Juab said, “so it’s really open, we just want to get the work and stories out there.”
Artists will base their work off one of three prompts, all themed around LGBTQIA+ topics and issues and while priority will be given to artists from the queer community, all people are welcome to apply.
Ms Juab said, for example, “if there is a mum that wants to share their story about their trans child, we wouldn’t want to stop that story from coming out, because that’s another perspective that a lot of trans children might want to hear.
“So we’re really open to anybody, but we will put a lot of priority on sharing artists and writers that are from the community.”
Another unique feature of this exhibition is that submissions can be made anonymously, to protect those who may be fearful of coming out in public.
Ms Juab said that particularly for certain religious beliefs, homophobia is still quite common and might be a deterrent for potential applicants – something which the exhibition team wanted to overcome.
“It could mean that your safety is a big concern,” Ms Juab said, “you might get hurt, you might get shut off from your family and friends and we didn’t want that to happen.”
For that reason, applicants can submit their artwork or writing with as much or as little personal information as they would like, so that they can remain anonymous but “still have a place to belong” and an opportunity to share and connect with people.
Ms Juab and her team hope that this exhibition and the ‘Unwrapping’ Festival prompts more discussion and raises awareness about the LGBTQIA+ community in the Greater Dandenong region.
“It makes me so emotional to think about the future of this Festival, because for me, as a person of colour and that belongs in this community, this is a representation that I’ve never had growing up in the suburbs,” Ms Juab said.
“We’re really happy that the council is actually recognising that we need support, and that this community is as important as the rest of the community.”
Applications are now open for both written and visual art categories and close at midnight on Friday 13 November.
