Welcome to our online gallery
Each show below is specially curated for online viewing by guest curators. Click on products for more information and to purchase. Guest curators receive a portion of sales.
Monsters & Other Alluring Creatures
Curator: Sage Walters
Show Statement:
When I watch horror movies, I never find myself rooting for the Final Girls or the white, suburban teenagers being hacked to death; I want the monster to win. Monsters have always been used as stand-ins for various social boogeymen: King Kong was a metaphor for the supposed predation of white women by Black men, trans women in horror movies were used to reinforce the trans panic defense, and mentally ill characters, like Michael Myers from Halloween, have been scapegoated as dangerous. In actuality, neurodiverse folx are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes. It makes sense that marginalized people find themselves in these stories and relate to them on a deeper level; these stories are about us. We can relate to the ostracization and loneliness, the repression and the longing for acceptance and love. Recently, Guillermo del Toro directed the Oscar-winning film, The Shape of Water, because he felt more kinship with the Gill Man from Creature From The Black Lagoon, than the handsome hero and wanted to “correct” the story. This collection is an attempt to “correct” those stories.
The art that I’ve chosen as part of this collection features various famous monsters, as well as written works that features stories which use metaphors of monstrousness or horror to convey their messages. I encourage you to ponder these questions when interacting with the art: What does it look like to apply an informed and critical analysis to the horror monsters we have been afraid of? How can we take the meaning away from what was once oppressive and reclaim these characters as altogether more powerful and radical than we ever hoped they could be?
This body of work is ongoing and I plan on contributing more work as quarantine continues, so make sure to watch out on social media for news. I look forward to updating this page while I’m quarantined at home, I hope you, the reader, can find nourishment from this art, too.
Show Statement:
When I watch horror movies, I never find myself rooting for the Final Girls or the white, suburban teenagers being hacked to death; I want the monster to win. Monsters have always been used as stand-ins for various social boogeymen: King Kong was a metaphor for the supposed predation of white women by Black men, trans women in horror movies were used to reinforce the trans panic defense, and mentally ill characters, like Michael Myers from Halloween, have been scapegoated as dangerous. In actuality, neurodiverse folx are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes. It makes sense that marginalized people find themselves in these stories and relate to them on a deeper level; these stories are about us. We can relate to the ostracization and loneliness, the repression and the longing for acceptance and love. Recently, Guillermo del Toro directed the Oscar-winning film, The Shape of Water, because he felt more kinship with the Gill Man from Creature From The Black Lagoon, than the handsome hero and wanted to “correct” the story. This collection is an attempt to “correct” those stories.
The art that I’ve chosen as part of this collection features various famous monsters, as well as written works that features stories which use metaphors of monstrousness or horror to convey their messages. I encourage you to ponder these questions when interacting with the art: What does it look like to apply an informed and critical analysis to the horror monsters we have been afraid of? How can we take the meaning away from what was once oppressive and reclaim these characters as altogether more powerful and radical than we ever hoped they could be?
This body of work is ongoing and I plan on contributing more work as quarantine continues, so make sure to watch out on social media for news. I look forward to updating this page while I’m quarantined at home, I hope you, the reader, can find nourishment from this art, too.
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I'm Sage.
They/them/theirs. In 2018, I graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR with a B.A. in Sociology & Anthropology, and a Double-Minor in Ethnic & Gender Studies. Right now, I live with my beautiful hairless gremlin cat, Mikey, and my amazing partner in an apartment without a kitchen in so-called Seattle, Washington. I'm a white, trans, nonbinary, queer crazy crip (I'm disabled) living on un-ceded Duwamish land. I want to live in a world where we truly care for and hold one another by creating accessible, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, queer futures. |
I'm currently a member of indie comics and art gallery, Push/Pull, where I co-organized Queer Press Fest 2019. My work is mostly autobiographical, focusing on intersections of disability, gender, and childhood trauma. Currently, I'm working on a book called Freaks about disability-representation in horror movies. You can find my artwork on instagram, @sage_leaves_art, my Facebook page, Sage Leaves, or my website: www.sage-leaves.com.
