QUEER DEITY IX (Kinship and Food Sharing)

D Rosen
2023
Cast Glass
1.5 x 4.5 x 1.5 in.

Image Description –
The faces of two Vampire Bats are cast in glass. Their tongues are touching. The glass sculpture is black with white speckles along the edges of their faces. Red streams of glass run over the faces of the Bats. It has a soft satin finish. The sculpture rests on a rocky grey textured concrete background.

VAMP features works from the series Queer Deity IV. Crucial to this work was Joan Roughgarden's research in Evolution's Rainbow,  which describes queer kinship behaviors within Vampire Bats, including feeding, grooming, and same-sex pair bonding. According to Bat biologist Dr. Merlin Tuttle, human fear is the most significant conservation issue facing Bats. Queer and trans people also struggle with the harms of being feared and misunderstood. 

Using this research and more, Rosen created a body of work focused on Vampire Bats as a part of their ongoing Queer Deity series, which celebrates queer and trans life in more-than-human worlds. The show includes glass Bats, a Bat house for local communities, and iron paintings. BiG SiSSY, a Tiohtià:ke/Montréal-based drag musician, will perform at night on November 15th. VAMP sheds light on the ubiquity of queerness within natural worlds and celebrates the beauty of kinship in queer and trans communities. 

D Rosen lives on the stolen and occupied lands of the Council of the Three Fires, known as Chicago, IL. They operate from the position that questions of animality are not binary but rather a tangle of ecologies and richly complicated identities framed by culture. Publications include “Gorgets: Trans Hummingbirds and Iridescent Echos,” Queering Nature, Antennae (2024); “Chrysanthemum Powder and Other Interspecies Scent Rituals,” Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance, Routledge (2021); and “fashioning the undead,” A Trace of Fashioned Violence (2020). Exhibitions include Elemental Impressions of Interspecies Care, of Violence, ACRE Projects, Chicago (2024); Lunglike Shadows, Arnarhlíð 1, Reykjavík (2023); and In Spite of Enclosures, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; S12 and USF Verftet, Bergen, Norway; JOYA, Parque Natural Sierra María, Los Vélez, Spain; and HEIMA, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. Rosen received grants from The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (2021 and 2024), the IL Arts Council (2020), and the Nordic Summer University (2020).