HOLLA BACK EXCLAIMATION POINTS: FINDING HUMOR IN THE DARKNESS OF THE GAY 90’S

Parties during the Gay 90’s were super fun and really fabulous but somebody was always dying. Gay men were dropping faster than their flies. So we dressed the sickies up as Movie Stars, pranced around in women’s clothing and cackled at The Grim Reeper! These photos are a record of Gay men surviving in the early years of the AIDS Crisis. Cupcake, Lovey Poo, Lady Hell, Barbara Merman, Christina Heyworth and Quentin Crisp are a few of the drop dead georgeous superstars you’ll recognize. Don’t miss the killer devil boiz and fan club porn stars photographed moments before they dropped dead.

Profuse decoration has frequently been associated with “gender bending” it has become a sign of “queerness as used in current academic parlance. (Fox 1) I began decorating profusely in my childhood at Girl Scout Camp, always a superstar in the Pixie tent. I continued decorating during my years in New York City. Magazines! Launch Parties! Night Clubs! Dog Shows! Last week I decorated these exclaimation points with some pictures from my Gay 90’s scrap book. I also used polka dots like Yayoi Kusama or Leigh Bowrey would use. Kusama’s polka dots signified the sexual disease of society “red polka dots…like the spots of disease. This is the attitude of the human race toward sex, which is sick.” (Jones 2)

I used obsessive repetitive stapling to attach the dots and photos. The repetitive action of stapling, stapling, stapling is a way to try and hold on to something that is slipping away. The psychedelic head shop day glow colors and op art patterns are nostalgic for utopian attitudes of the 60’s sexual revolution which revolted in the 80’s with AIDS.

1. Fox, Howard. Lari Pittman, LA, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1996.
2. Jones, Leslie C.. Transgressive Feminity: Art and Gender in the Sixties and Seventies, Abject Art Repulsion and Desire in American Art, NYC, The Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1993