HowlRound Article
Queer Bodies Open Portals to New Worlds
Essay by Laura Grothaus
As I enter Area 405 in Baltimore for the opening of Paradise Portals, the glow of projections greets me. Floating discs made of fabric and plexiglass fill the space. Each is three to five feet in diameter. On their translucent surfaces, films play, viewable from all angles, creating an otherworldly throng of digital humans. In one, landscapes and textures move across DJ Aave’s face. In another, Rahne Alexander’s body is obscured by green screen and caution tape. With collaborators DJ Aave, Rahne Alexander, Alexander D’Agostino, Arit Emmanuela, Eli Erlick, Max Gregg, Bryce Hample, Bao Nguyen, Pangelica, Amy Reid, and Soleil, Red Rae has created a show that asks, “If your body is a portal, where does it lead?”
Each video answers this question. Through its ensemble of trans and queer performers, the exhibition centers transness and queerness in its answers. The show’s run coincides with Pride, adding to a conversation about desire, bodily autonomy, resistance, and resilience that spans many years and many geographies. It also comes at a time of escalating attacks on transgender and queer lives. Hate-fueled violence has increased. The Trump-backed budget reconciliation bill prohibits federal Medicaid funds from covering gender-affirming medical care for adults and minors. In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors does not illegally discriminate against individuals on the basis of sex or transgender status. The court will soon hear cases related to trans athletes and may choose to hear a case that jeopardizes the right to same-sex marriage set by Obergefell v. Hodges.
In the face of these threats, some of us might feel the increasing desire to find an escape, however temporary. But in Paradise Portals, the portals offer us a different choice. The only way out is through the multiplicity of realities that we contain. The portals shown here do not linger simply in fear, anger, or grief. They explore joy, playfulness, curiosity, and more, defying binaries and borders. They ask us to consider all the selves we contain, what pieces of history and future dance inside us, and what elements of the more-than-human world we could invite in. Through embracing the mess of self and the possibilities found there, we might be able to imagine and then bring about peace, healthy conflict, deep pleasure, and more equitable systems.
Audience members are encouraged to partake in this curiosity. We receive a map of the space, which includes a riddle pointing to the locations of six hidden portals. (All of these have been designed by Red.) Around me, visitors kneel and peer into the crevices of the building, searching. These portals are smaller than the disks suspended from the ceiling. You might find one in the belly of a machine beside the gallery of trans ancestors, which featured photos curated by Eli Erlick. Or you might find one hovering in a corner of the high ceiling, like a stray cloud. There’s a delight in finding something secret and a type of hope evoked by knowing a secret exists somewhere, waiting to be found. If bodies are portals, there is always another left to find, a delicious mystery waiting to be discovered, and more realms to bask in than we can know.
Echoing this possibility for permutation, the show changes every night. It runs on Fridays for a month and a half, with the acts lasting around an hour all together. Each of the collaborators has at least one live performance with their portal, but only three or four perform on any given night. The audience, too, shifts the dynamic of the performance, as many of the cast invite viewers to interact with them. On one Friday, I stood on the balcony during Bao Nguyen’s piece while they demanded that someone come help with the wash, saying, “We wait here all night until one of you helps.” A twisting silence filled the space until someone next to me dashed down to wring out the soapy clothes. In another piece, Alexander D’Agostino, wearing a chainmail headdress, a thong, and sparkling silver high tops, instructed us to hiss like snakes as they called forth the queer spirits from the four corners of the Earth.
