In recent times, there has been a glut of queer art intent on saying absolutely nothing about queerness itself. Keith Haring works sit indiscriminately on T-shirts and rugs peddled by squillion-dollar companies; precocious young gays smooch in schmaltzy romcoms and Netflix series aestheticised to the high heavens and shorn of anything resembling the arcane or the antic; anything which could threaten their lucrative appeal. We are living through the golden age of pinkwashing – where, despite ongoing waves of anti-LGBT violence around the world, queerness has successfully ingratiated itself into the pockets of the cultural elite to become that most dreaded thing: sellable. What might radical queer art look like now?
Taylor Mac has an answer. In the program notes to new show Bark of Millions, the 50-year-old polymath – performer, playwright, director, seminal and eternally prolific figure of queer New York – finds value in mystery. “I want to wonder on queerness rather than decide and tell others what it is,” Mac writes, before lamenting the unfortunate reality of the arts industry and its overlapping demands from marketing teams, audiences, and – god forbid – time-poor critics desperate to ascribe meaning where none exists.
