Found Art- The Gay Rights Movement, 1970 through 1990

We are ... Coming out of our closet and proud of it.

The partial purpose of our project was to throw light upon the coming out of the gay community to be true to their feelings. We symbolized this action of the gay community by building a closet like structure with cardboard and showing the gay community walking out into a world they were initially not accepted in.

In our project we portrayed the two adversary worlds with the use of two cardboard boxes, one of which was painted black and red to show hatred towards and opposition to the community coming out of the second box that was painted in rainbow colors. To portray pro-gay ideas, we pasted a 2D figurine of Harvey Milk, a key leader in the struggle for gay rights, and an album produced in 1976 by Elton John a famous pianist who declared his homosexuality in an interview in 1976. Through the use of the outside cover of the movie, “The Longtime Companion" (1990) which deals with a gay couple and the issue of AIDS, we intended to illustrate the extent to which the idea of homosexuality had crept into the society. Since homosexuality was often related to AIDS, we included AIDS quilts that my group member came across in a thrift store. To display the element of opposition of the gay-rights movement, we included pictures of the prominent anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, delivering a speech to an assembly of anti-gay fanatics who were affiliated to the "Save Our Children" campaign. Anti-gay rally pictures captured the element of violence and level of opposition against the gay community. We obtained our found art from teachers, neighbors, thrift stores and our own garage.

This project enriched me with experience. I learnt so much more about the gay right movement than I did initially. I experienced the highs and lows of working with, and depending on, other people to meet a project deadline. This project involved thinking outside the box while communicating an idea to an audience that may generally not be aware of the topic. After glancing at the finished project it occurred to me that it must have taken tremendous courage for the gay people of that time to declare their sexual orientation to the world despite of known opposition.

The advice I offer to next year’s class is effectively delegating tasks after looking at skill sets of the group members. There will never be enough time to complete a project to ones liking. Therefore, one needs to be creative, use everyday artifacts to symbolize and represent a theme relating to ones topic.