Dr. Ela Przybyło’s black and white photography exhibit “Queer & Trans on Campus” opens at Rachel Cooper Art Gallery on February 15 and runs through August 1, 2024. There will be an opening reception and artist talk at 3 p.m. on Thursday, February 22, in Rachel Cooper Hall room 237.
Influenced by queer and trans photographers like Laura Aguilar and Jess T. Dugan, whose work reveals both queer joy and power through vulnerability, Przybyło uses an analog camera and waste-reduced film to capture what it means to be queer and/or trans faculty at ISU.
More specifically, Przybyło’s exhibit acts as a response to cultural geographer Katherine McKittrick’s insights on identity and belonging in various spaces; Przybyło aims “to challenge narrow understandings of who a professor can be and what they can look like, and to also start a conversation around how, ultimately, universities serve or fail to serve queer and trans community members.” To effectively convey this message, Przybyło relies on black and white film, which “(encourages) pause, slowness, and deliberation—too little of which employees are usually granted by institutions.”
As a queer creator working with queer and trans subjects, Przybyło also emphasizes the political significance of queer art. She explains that she is “interested in how queer and trans people are actually not at all that welcome in university spaces, at least not if they are invested in queering, in troubling, the very unqueer ways universities co-opt LGBTQ2IA+ people while silencing certain discourses, like those around freeing Palestine from occupation.” Przybyło hopes “Queer & Trans on Campus” will spark more productive discussions around inclusivity and support for marginalized faculty.
Przybyło is the graduate director and an associate professor of English, as well as core faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. Przybyło’s exhibit runs through August 1.
