| Being considered a true artist that is a
lesbian has been a battle that Chinn has been on the front lines for years. Her paintings
are a mirror of her world. A majority of her paintings are of her family and friends,
depicting her life in a variety of families that society denies such diversity exists. In
1982, Chinn moved to the Castro district in San Francisco with her lover. In this
neighborhood resided many activists of the gay community, and Chinn promptly entrenched
herself in their world. She met members of the Harvey Milk Club, political activists for
gay civil rights. Within this culture, the AIDS epidemic was beginning to emerge, but its
origin was a gray shadow. Chinn recalls this time as one of suspicion and fear, and
remembers how her community took the issue by the horns and dealt with it. “Okay, we
are dealing with some sort of a health crisis, but we don’t know exactly what the
causes are. There were a lot of discussions among the different political groups at the
time. Some of these groups were the Alice B. Toklas Club, Stonewall, and others that I
remember from the early period."1 Chinn’s portraits of the disenfranchised showcase people of color, women,
along with gay and lesbian couples, in a favorable light. Her portraits are not of despair
or heartbreak. On the contrary, they are vivid, colorful renditions of ordinary life seen
through the eyes of her community.
“In the portfolio of images that I have selected over
a period of time, it has turned out that quite a few of the subjects I had painted later
developed a variety of AIDS-related symptoms and illnesses, and they are no longer around.
So my work is a documentation of an era, as well as a documenting of the people in my
sociopolitical network." 1
Throughout the 1980’s, Chinn continued to create
oversized portraits of acrylics on canvas, and began speaking at several conferences and
forums on topics of lesbian and contemporary Asian art, many of which had become exhibits
with an activist theme. In 1985, Chinn has her second one-woman showing at the University
of California Extension Gallery in San Francisco. Chinn talks about her works during this
period as a time of development of her signature art and her political views:
"…I was painting people in my general network of friends. I would say that I had
been painting them pretty much since the late seventies and I was doing my political
activism simultaneously. I was doing electoral politics, and I was out there on the street
corner at 18th and Castro street handing out information about different political
candidates."1
In 1994, Chinn was involved in the exhibit “Families:
Rebuilding, Reinventing, Recreating” at the Euphrat Museum of Art. Jan
Rindfleish of De Anza College, curated the exhibit. This exhibit was a gathering of
artists depicting family life outside of the ‘50’s image of two heterosexual
parents and two kids. Reviewed by Casey FitzSimons of Artweek, the exhibit is a narrative
theme with individual contributions to the family “table”; “..each
contribution—the “food” and accessories—are accessible standing alone;
they include roses on a platter of salt, a criticism-of-values tea set, and loosely
stitched album photos that variously convey pride, humility, and the setting of standards,
as well as nature and struggle for recognition.”2
Chinn’s contribution to this exhibit, according to
FitzSimons, is her “photo-like portraits of a family she constructed of search
and circumstance, then saw decimated by AIDS. Outside this exhibition, the pictures might
read simply as a report of her environment with less emotional source and content.”
2 Chinn’s choice of placing her work in this exhibition was an act of
activism. Without the comparison of art by men, mothers, adult children, and
heterosexuals, the impact of what Chinn considers a family might have been nothing but a
compulsory nod.
For an artist's work to be considered, it must first be
recognized. Chinn has commented that her work is "invisible" in the world of
fine arts. I must agree, as I have been an avid follower of art and museum showings since
I was a small child. Given the wealth of talent that is refused any national exposure,
it's not a surprise that the artists who are refused admission into the more
"high-brow" galleries begin to form their own. Chinn's history as part of the
grassroots efforts to give artists that are gay/lesbian and people of color a voice in
those cultures is well documented. Outside of the lesbian and asian societies, she is
still an unknown. To address theses issues of validation and recognition, Chinn has taken
the reigns of change and steered them in the appropriate direction: joining a group of
women artists of Asian descent who practiced a variety of visual art forms, namely the
Asian American Women's Artist Association. Chinn talks about her experience in joining the
AAWAA: "The artist Flo Oy Wong, who was exhibiting her installations at Mills College
at the time, introduced me to AAWAA. She invited me to meet some of its members, a loosely
formed group of women artists of Asian descent who practiced a variety of visual art
forms, and who were located in the San Francisco Bay Area. At that time I met Betty Kano,
later on Bernice Bing, Dawn Nakanishi, Nancy Hom, Diane Tani, and a number of
others."
"Because of my visibility as a lesbian in San
Francisco's electoral politics, I also assumed a new role as a cultural activist. I became
a writer and lecturer at times, stressing the importance of creating our own network of
like-minded artists and writers. I advanced the idea that in the absence of a system that
functioned adequately for contemporary artists such as myself, it is critical to identify
our own resources, our own educators, writers, historians and artists of note.5"
 The first Qcc Board of Directors:(left to right, upper)
Freddie Niem, Osa Hidalgo-de la Riva, Rudy Lemcke, Lenore Chinn, Greg Day, Pam
Peniston.(left to right, lower) Adrienne Fuzee, Jeff Jones, Blackberri. (not shown)Carol
Stuart.
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| Chinn became involved with the Queer
Cultural Center in 1993, then called the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Center for Art and
Culture. Several members of the original group were previously involved with San Francisco
Mayor Art Agnos' Cultural Affairs Task Force which convened in 1989. "At one point I was involved with LVA, then called Lesbians in the Visual
Arts, and was at one time, its co-chair along with curator and arts historian, Adrienne
Fuzee. Later I became its chair and finally I decided to devote my attention to a new arts
organization, then called the Lesbian and Gay Center for Art and Culture. I was exploring
a variety of options for participating in an arts organization at a board level. I had
been approached by several friends in the arts and eventually settled into AAWAA and
concurrently, the group which would evolve into QCC (Queer Cultural Center)."
Chinn's activism escalates from this point in time, and
she is included in numerous juried exhibitions, and curates several more over the next ten
years. With all this activity, I asked her how political involvement affect her work as an
artist:
"Arts administering, or any kind of work in the
non-profit arts sector, has a very real effect of pulling one away from the production of
art. But at least in my work, whether it be painting or pushing community based arts
agendas, they are driven by the same passion and consciousness. I have a relationship with
an arts constituency, and in the long run, I believe this nurtures the environment for the
work I create. Those who share this ideology believe in the creation of new institutions
which meet our needs as artists, and which can identify and grow new audiences."
In 1997, Chinn takes another shot at the concept of
family with the exhibition “Family Album” at the Luggage Store Gallery. Barbara Fisher of
Artweek writes of the exhibition “…that family is as diverse as the visual
methods employed in this intriguing exhibition…Images of families with lesbian
heads-of-household, successive generation of one African-American family, emotionally
abandoned children, Asian families, and gay male couples fulfill the promise of new
traditions.” Chinn displayed her piece The Score. Fisher
writes “A painting by curator Lenore Chinn modestly positioned over the staircase
that leads to the gallery still manages to reign regally with its clear image of a gay
couple celebrating twenty years of relationship.”3
Chinn’s work is also a commentary of the essence of
gender and typical gender roles that are being re-defined. Within this exhibition and
outside of it, Chinn throws the question of what is gender in the viewer’s face. Her
creations bring a new face to the roles that were once clearly defined—who should be
the head of the house? Is there a need for one? Does it really matter? In her painting Dinner for Two, the roles of gender are ambiguous—which
person is the dominant? Should there be a dominant role in a relationship? These questions
may not be answered, but as Chinn says, “Whether the viewer chooses to approve or
disapprove of my work is inconsequential as long as it is not ignored. The point is it
– the subject and the genre of my work – must be considered”.
"As marginalized artists who do not conform to
archaic standards of taste, content or political convention, we are virtually locked out
of the arts establishment as it currently exists. And while I believe we should strive to
make fundamental changes within this structure we cannot overlook the socio-political
implications of this course of action. Along with this strategy we must seriously begin a
process of deconstruction. That is, instead of relying solely on the good graces of these
power brokers in the art world to validate our worth and serve our needs, we must acquire
the knowledge and skills to implement our own ideas. We must organize and give voice to
our own creative communities politically, economically and artistically, develop our own
scholarly forums and identify our own collectors. In essence we must expand our idea of
our role as artists and create a cultural framework that works for us. In a way I see this
process as no different than trying to negotiate the emotional acrobatics of assimilation.
While we may find aspects of the arts world beneficial to our overall goals and learn from
this institutional model, it is equally important to preserve the core of one's identity.
As a positive thinker I know that it is possible to extract elements from one's myriad
learning experiences and convert them into a well of resources. This is the vision I
advocate, and through our efforts, I believe we can become catalysts for social change.5" |
