In 1972, Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, in collaboration with students from the CalArts Feminist Art Program, put together a installation called Womanhouse on Mariposa Street in Hollywood.

Each room - the kitchen, bathroom, living space, and bedroom--were all completely deconstructed to infer a cis-female, hyper-feminized space of under-acknowledged and certainly over-utilized labor.

The main objective of this collaborative project asked the visitors of the installation to conceive of a feminist approach to domesticity by problematizing any elements that were positioned within a patriarchal definition of labor and home.

Nearly 46 years later, Queer Home seeks to re-examine this endeavor in concept and practice. Home is often a transient concept for queer people--it is a space that is most often relinquished on a psychic and psychological level. Home is persistently redefined, and as James Baldwin suggests, “an irrevocable condition.” As we seek to “queer” the concept of home, we understand that we needn’t look further than the body. We are our home. Therefore, our exploration of home must also include an investigation of privacy.

Queer Home will be created in collaboration with the members of the LGBT Center of Raleigh, which was recently forced to find new space. The main gallery of VAE Raleigh will be divided into four rooms of the house: kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom. And each room will be assigned to a program or group to collaborate on the design, essentially to “queer the space.”

- Erica Cardwell