Interview

with EL*C's Leila Lohman, Executive Co-Director

1. It appears that Lesbiennale has been ‘brewing’ for a long time now, through EL*C’s conferences - would you say that a particular lack of representation of radical lesbian, trans, and queer art made its existence necessary?

Firstly, let me thank Queef for your work in general, and for spotlighting EL*C’s lesbian art festival: Lesbiennale!

Also, for those who might not be familiar with our network: The Eurocentralasian Lesbian* Community – (“ELC”) is a lesbian feminist and intersectional network. The EL*C started out of a self-organised space in 2016, recognizing the multitude of needs surrounding the rights, the visibility and the well-being of lesbians throughout Europe and Central Asia. Our conferences are our lighthouses (Vienna, 2017 and Kyiv, 2019) – Most recently, we’ve emphasised the need for lesbians to be included in all forms of pandemic-response work that is being undertaken: data collection, funding, and community support. More info about EL*C can be found here: https://europeanlesbianconference.org/

 About the Lesbiennale, indeed, we have always curated a dedicated space to showcase visual art works during our conferences! And we make sure that cultural events (performances, concerts) take place throughout the programme. But having to limit the number of art works displayed somehow frustrated us; we wanted to show so much more, hence the idea of the Lesbiennale: a whole art festival dedicated to celebrating creations by lesbian artists. And with artists hit hard during the pandemic because of countless gigs canceled, we decided that politically this was a good time to curate such an event. And with over 500 works (incl. Photography, video, sound, performance, and sculpture) sent in via the open call, we see how eager artists across Europe, Central Asia & beyond are to get back out into the world again after the two year hiatus!

Also, we are excited about the fact that so many Brussels-based lesbian and queer collectives and venues have decided to join us for the first edition of our lesbian art festival; these types of projects become great opportunities to get to know like minded groups and together to build something meaningful for our communities. In parallel, although the pandemic has caused many hardships overall, it has forced event curators to rethink the way we work, and having to organise much online this past year has made us more aware of the potential in outreach and in scale that comes with it; Thanks to these shifts in the way we organise event, in parallel to Brussels and online events we are building a digital art gallery that will showcase hundreds of artists from all over the world.

More details about the Lesbiennale (purpose, program & partners) can be found on the festival’s website: https://lesbiennale.art/

2. What are the current top advocacy points in your view when it comes to lesbian issues?

EL*C itself started in 2016 following the realisation by a group of lesbian activists that ‘we are best off addressing our own issues ourselves’. It’s good to start by acknowledging the existence of ‘lesbian issues’ which lie at the crossroad of structural androcentrism, misogyny and homophobia. The mixture of these stigmas gives rise to lesbophobia. The stigmas at the root of lesbophobia also explain how lesbians are paradoxically sexualised (misogyny) and ostracised (androcentrism) oftentimes simultaneously in society. This paradox in turn greatly impacts lesbians’ position in terms of societal power relations. This is where our advocacy work comes into play, to try and redress the main issues engendered by lesbophobia:

• Invisibility or biased visibility: in the media, in policy, politics, and other decision making tables.

• Restricted access to rights: civil, political and economic rights or access to sexual and reproductive rights and health.

• Violence: this can be oversexualisation in the media, online, it manifests both physically or verbally.

• Undersourced: this can be lack of funding, research, information, data.

In parallel to this work to increase visibility around our issues we need to be fully aware of and ready to resist the upsurge in anti-gender spending (in the past decade) and its multiple ramifications in Europe, Central Asia and beyond. Especially lesbian activists - because they are targeted because they are women and queer - must be fully aware of the tools, tactics and deliberate strategy used by the anti-gender movement to roll back human rights in Europe.

3. Europe and Central Asia are two very different worlds, with different lived experiences by their people - please share your piece in finding unity and common goals - how did these two worlds merge together in one community?

Fascinating with lesbian communities is that regardless of where we are based we are all together in a vast fight against ‘lesbophobia’. So no matter the region, our community members are still fighting to be visible, to access their human rights, to be free from violence and to gain access to resources. Only the context dictates more specifically where extra pressure and/or resistance is needed on behalf of local lesbian communities. Therefore, overall, the key to building a successful community is to keep focused on what unites you. In the case of the EL*C network, it’s the fight against lesbophobia that serves as our overall rallying call.  

4. For us non-francophones: what’s the play behind the world Lesbiennale?                                     

The term ‘Lesbiennale’ is an amusing merger of the terms ‘lesbian’ and ‘biennale’. The latter is a term commonly used in the art world and which alludes to an event occuring every two years. Similarly, following our first edition in 2021, our goal is to have this festival take place every two years in a different location within our scope of work: Europe & Central Asia.

5. You talk about the “inherent closeness of radical lesbians and artists” - could you go a little in depth about that? What does it mean to you?

Both radical lesbians and artists historically have tested, challenged and many times proposed alternatives to the ways societies have been organised. At times when censorship or even criminalisation was in place folks have had to be extra creative. The possibility given by artistic expression to propose new options for the way things could be has attracted many queer folks, including lesbians into making art. In this sense, art becomes a medium, like a bridge or perhaps even a form of subversive language employed to express new ideas and make new proposals, which oftentimes carry the potential to generate reflection, questioning or even paradigm shifts. 

Artistic productions put into the world by lesbians makes for precious cultural heritage. These productions many times represent our shared and collective alternative vision of society. These productions serve as ‘social glue’ for lesbians. With the Lesbiennale our goal is to foster this sense of community brought about by lesbian art & culture.