“The Museum of Queer Curiosities” MFA thesis exhibition

A BIG CONGRATULATIONS to third-year printmaking MFA student Feliks Pyron for passing their thesis exhibition and oral defense. “The Museum of Queer Curiosities” was installed in the WVU Mesaros Gallery a few weeks ago before the WVU campus was shut down. Gallery Coordinator Shalya Marsh and School of Art faculty Jeffrey Moser were kind enough to document and create a virtual gallery of this year’s MFA Thesis Exhibitions: https://ccarts.smugmug.com/…/The-Museum-of-Queer…/

Feliks wrote the following as an introduction to their thesis exhibition:“My work explores themes of identity, authority, unknowing, and trust, the research of which manifests in the existence of The Museum of Queer Curiosities. In our life, we are trained to want predictability and stability, and institutions from school to media to the work routine help us understand- or rather, enforce- this idea. For many trans, non-binary, or otherwise queer persons, living queer means being placed against hetero/cisnormative traditions of stability. When we challenge this by just existing, we are unfortunately met with misunderstanding, fear, and often violence. The Museum of Queer Curiosities hopes to assuage some of this. Rather than being an institution of established power, by claiming this institution as a queer person, hopefully I can then change up the content of an expected niche museum, and bring the viewer into a space where they understand they are to be educated. On what is never explicit, but through the replication and manipulation of trusted visual cues through a variety of media, hopefully we can encourage sympathy, and a willingness to learn. Through this we can find a way to remove our harmful fears of people different from us, embracing our ephemeral communities and identities even in the face of unknowingness. Like a real museum, the simulation that is TMOQC acts in its genesis as evidence, celebration, and education of queerness- of states outside of what others tell us is stable.”