A Queer Thing: Reflections on the Art Exhibition Swallow My Pride

The article focuses on the 2010 art exhibition Swallow My Pride (SMP), a visceral response to the commercialization of gay culture in Cape Town and a critique of notions of queerness and its visibility in the public sphere. SMP brought local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex artists together to reflect upon queerness through methodology and an appeal to the personal. In the exhibit, queerness functioned as a strategy to articulate difference, challenge heteronormativity, and problematize gender identifications. The artworks brought a fresh focus to the courage, suffering, humor, intelligence, and enormous variety of local queer culture. The article investigates how the exhibition, as a queer archive, embraced a critical history of sexuality and gender in the present moment, as well as acknowledging absent voices and narratives, which have been previously silenced and unnamed.