A vivid history of LGBTQ+ counterculture in 1980s New York

In 1979, the Pyra­mid Club opened its doors to New York​’s down­town avant-garde, ush­er­ing in a new era of art and activism that would come to define the East Vil­lage scene. Here a coterie of under­ground artists and per­form­ers like Lady Bun­ny, RuPaul, Tab­boo!, and Sis­ter Dimen­sion reimag­ined drag as we know it today. It was a pan­theon of larg­er-than-life per­sonas that eschewed stale tropes of ​“female imper­son­ation” to cre­ate new expres­sions of gen­der, style, iden­ti­ty — and any per­mu­ta­tion therein.

With the exhi­bi­tion Drag Show, cura­tor Paul Bak­er Prindle revis­its this fabled chap­ter of LGBTQ his­to­ry, cel­e­brat­ing the icon­o­clasts, rad­i­cals, and rene­gades who forged their own path dur­ing the height of the AIDS cri­sis. The show brings togeth­er works by pho­tog­ra­phers includ­ing Nan Goldin and David Yarritu, as well as work by drag leg­end Lin­da Simp­son, the mas­ter­mind behind the under­ground zine, My Com­rade.

“The exhi­bi­tion explores how they came togeth­er in the face of excep­tion­al tri­als by fore­ground­ing their dif­fer­ence as a source of pow­er,” says Prindle, who orga­nized Drag Show as a response to the ongo­ing attack on LGBTQ rights across the Unit­ed States today. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion ​‘80s activists, Prindle shares insights from Tab­boo!, who remem­bers the har­row­ing real­i­ties of AIDS at a time when the gov­ern­ment, media, pub­lic health, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions left them for dead.

“A few times a week, some­one you knew was dead, and you couldn’t even have a memo­r­i­al because there was so much shame. It dec­i­mat­ed a whole gen­er­a­tion,” Tab­boo! told Prindle. ​“Being gay was still ille­gal. It was con­sid­ered a men­tal dis­ease. The idea of doing some­thing like Wig­stock out­side in the mid­dle of the day was so fuck­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary…. To be out­side and not be killed was wild.”

Drag Show pays homage to the inno­va­tors whose courage, cre­ativ­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing vision in the face of state-sanc­tioned vio­lence trans­formed the land­scape of pol­i­tics and pop cul­ture alike. ​“Gays have had long had an impact on the pro­duc­tion of cul­ture, but this moment is one where it was unde­ni­able; the impact couldn’t be ful­ly hid­den behind cod­ed images or words,” Prindle says.

Pho­tog­ra­phy played an inte­gral role in mak­ing vis­i­ble all that had been mis­rep­re­sent­ed or whol­ly erased, cen­tring the sto­ries and strug­gles of those mar­gin­alised by sys­temic oppres­sion and open­ing new spaces for acts of joy and resistance.

“Pho­tog­ra­phy places your world into the his­tor­i­cal archive while also affirm­ing one’s sense of self-worth, iden­ti­ty, con­nec­tion with oth­ers,” says Prindle. He points to the rise of insta­mat­ic cam­eras dur­ing this time as a vital tool to advance the cul­ture and the cause.

“Polaroid film was an incred­i­ble tool for cre­at­ing colour images that didn’t require you to open your­self up to cen­sor­ship or reliance on a homo­pho­bic print­er,” he says. ​“You could make an image of any­thing — espe­cial­ly things that were not for everyone’s eyes. To con­trol the means of pro­duc­tion around queer images is extreme­ly empowering.”

Drag Show was on view through Decem­ber 15, 2023, at Car­olyn Cam­pagna Kleefeld Con­tem­po­rary Art Muse­um of Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Long Beach in California.

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