Queering the Family: Threading a Metaphor

Indeed, Collins conceived her installation as “the Family of Queers laid bare.”¹ 1 - Liz Collins, “Cast of Characters, An Immersive Queer Portrait Exhibition,” Kickstarter, accessible online. Use of the word “family” stands out: laden with meaning, it acts upon the work as it does upon the social organization that it usually designates. With this word, the patterns in Collins’s work should be understood both literally and figuratively. The medium is also a political gesture in which materials, community groups, and marginalized sexualities cross, entwine, and knot together in a celebration of different ways of being together.