Chosen Familias: LGBTQ Latinx stories
June 7 – October 20, 2019
Curated by Tina Valentin Aguirre and Juan Antonio Fernandez
A personal family photo in the “Chosen Familias” exhibition depicting curator Tina Valentin Aguirre, second from left, with their mother and brothers. Photo courtesy of Tina Valentin Aguirre.
“Chosen Familias” displays photography and text to center both biological and chosen Latinx LGBTQ family connections as structures that build hope and resilience.
The Bay Area’s LGBTQ Latinx community has a rich heritage, one that has withstood the ravages of AIDS and the threat of gentrification and displacement. Yet a lack of connection between generations of queer Latinx people persists, partially because stories about the community have focused on specific places, historical events, politics and loss. What is missing is an understanding of how the queer Latinx community has collectively overcome challenges and mobilized by building strong bonds of kinship. This is the story of the familia—the family.
“Chosen Familias” examines queer Latinx stories by documenting real-time, real-life Latinx relationships. By appropriating and queering the concept of the traditional family photo album, the exhibition reframes documentation of queer mothers, daughters, fathers, children, aunts and uncles. Each of the contributors to the exhibition has shared family photo albums for display, allowing visitors to leaf through the pages and discover the unique constellation of people who make up their familias. In addition, the exhibition features a video station that will play interviews with and footage of Bay Area LGBTQ Latinx activists and artists of the past four decades.
The exhibition showcases the ways that queer Latinx people have forged personal and community bonds. Curated by Tina Valentin Aguirre, chair of the GLBT Historical Society’s board of directors, “Chosen Familias” expands the definition of LGBTQ family to encompass not just biological relatives, but also mentors, coalition members and the networks of people that are part of the familia.
“‘Chosen Familias’ focuses on the ways our contributors document their relationships and personal evolutions in material form,” says Aguirre. “Each of the contributors shapes and shares their narrative through tangible, visible storytelling. The exhibition helps us to connect the dots between us by featuring intergenerational stories of our queer families. By doing so, we hope to inspire our own Latinx community and those who visit the museum to rethink the meaning of family in ways that honor and empower queer forms of kinship.”
Curator Tina Valentin Aguirre and exhibition collaborators. Top row: Fabian Echevarria and Shane Zaldivar. Second row: Prado Gomez and Donna Personna. Third row: Rigoberto Marquez, Angel Fabian and Tina Valentin Aguirre. Fourth row: Adela Vazquez, Natalia Vigil and Olga Talamante. Bottom row: Lito Sandoval and Mason J. Smith. Photo by Fabian Echevarria/Bill Jennings.
About the CuratorS
Tina Valentin Aguirre (genderqueer, they/them pronouns) is a poet, movie director and opera producer, holding a BA in communication from Stanford University. They moved to the Bay Area for in 1986 and found a vibrant queer Latinx community mobilizing against AIDS. In the early 1990s, they helped set up AIDS programs at Mission Neighborhood Health Center’s Clínica Esperanza and Community United in Response to AIDS/SIDA (CURAS). Later, they worked with Queer Latino/a Artists Coalition (QueLACO), the Institute for MultiRacial Justice, and Tenth Muse Productions, producing an art festival, a movie festival and an opera. They currently serve as the associate director, Institutional Giving at the Shanti Project and as the chair of the GLBT Historical Society’s board of directors.
Juan Antonio Fernandez (he/him pronouns) is a theater and arts producer and media scholar. His work analyzes the various ways digital social media is used by contemporary Chicana/o/x artists & cultural producers. His current study focuses on the performance of ethnicity, gender, cultural citizenship and sexuality within social networking apps like Instagram and the effects of the digital identity on the reflected community. Juan received his M.A. in Media Studies + Social Change at Queens College, CUNY. He is also a graduate of UCLA holding a BA in Chicana/o Studies & LGBTQ Studies. His previous work as a scholar/activist has focused on gay Chicano fiction & storytelling, performance, and archiving Queer Chicana/o/x cultural productions. This includes archiving the work of the Maricón Collective for the UCLA Chicano Studies Resource Center. He also created & produced the Movida Storytelling Project in collaboration with the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.
Who Makes Up Your Chosen Family?
We invited museum visitors to reflect on and share their responses to one of the following questions:
How does your chosen family inspire and nurture you?
What is your role in your chosen family?
In what ways does your chosen family make a difference in your community?
How do you honor your chosen family?
Here’s what they told us…
I honor my chosen family by highlighting and reminding them about the power in their being and daily actions.
Nalini from SF
For me, some families are the ones that you choose, and some are the ones that choose you.
Bill Jennings from San Francisco
My chosen family inspires me because we inspire others! We are a queer body positive burlesque troop that inspires others to love themselves!
Katie from MD
My chosen family helps me to shine as my authentic self. I am a daughter, mother, niece, aunt, and cheerleader. I am blessed to have a birth family that adores me, but my chosen family embraces me in ways that only they can.
Kylie Minono from Sf
My chosen family inspires me, by being supportive, loving, and caring.
Justin from San Francisco
I'm 13. My family chose me when I was really young because I'm adopted. I got to choose my younger sister though which is really cool. When you are adopted at such a young age, you don't really have a choice, but as you get older you realize that the people who adopted you pretty much saved your life. I couldn't have asked for a better chosen family because we all chose each other. I love them and I would never ever leave them for anyone else.
Asha Romesburg from The Romesburg Family
Inspires me to learn more and become a better/greater contributor to society as a whole. They allow me to truly be who I am and teach me everyday how to be. I love them with all my heart.
Parker Griffin from Orange County, CA
My chosen family is my theatre kids from Fort Wayne IN. I love my "childrens" every one of them. My questioning "son" Daveontae, my Bi "daughter" Arly, my "theatre wife" who is pansexual, Mya, and my theatre "husband" Stevon who is Bi. I love all of them with all of my heart, and I cant wait to see them back home at the stage. My girlfriend jess is pan and I love her the most. I miss her. I go home tomorrow, and I can't wait to be in her arms.
Ella "Eli" Whitlock from Fort Wayne IN
I honor my chosen by living each day like it's my last, not taking people for granted, and not giving a sh*t about what anyone thinks!
Vanessa A.M. from Seattle, WA
My chosen family is the place I can be the true me, where I am appreciated for who I am. My role in my chosen family is to challenge my family to be honest and talk about their emotions.
Matanor Shucker from Israel
As the Mother of my chosen family, I work to keep the peace and foster kindness that I wish to see in the world. They inspire me to value love and empathy, as well as help me learn it. Many of my chosen family are still teens, and do not have the means to express themselves, or the freedom to make the changes they wish to see. I honor them by expressing and being myself, and by making the difference that I can.
Kass
True family are not the ones you are born with. Those are your blood. True family are the ones you can remove your mask and cry around without shame. I'm lucky to have love from my blood and my true family.
James B
Friends, partners, and fur babies
Dylan
My kitties 🐱🚀
Lilia from Scottsdale
They teach me that the future I dream is possible and that I am allowed to demand space for myself and those around me. They celebrate me and let me celebrate them. They help me process and emotionally recover from my activism work. They also show up to protests and at work meetings to protect people. By calling them and telling them I love them, by telling them to go to therapy and by my work archiving lgbtq history.
Rachel Elise Greiner from Reno, NV
My chosen family helps me to understand that I'm a normal guy and I have a brilliant future in my life. I honor them making the first steps: coming out for friends and family so they feel more comfortable to do the same.
Bruno Almeida Moreno from Brazil
My chosen family is Sam, Hamdee, Atteeq and Mano because of their unfaltering and unwithering love no matter where norms of conservative Pakistani society stand. Love is love. Universal and without boundaries. And all boundaries are conventions waiting to be transcended.
Hammed from Lahore, Pakistan
My chosen family inspires and nurtures me by allowing me to talk about whatever and however I feel as I continue my journey to discover who I am, who I'm attracted to, and, what I identify as. It gives me a great relief to know that I can always trust and count on my chosen family to help me in whatever I'm going through and that I can be myself without feeling ashamed or trying to hide who I am.
Melissa Hernandez from Van Nuys, CA
Having a chosen family who cherish me saved my life.
Gareth from London, UK
My chosen family comes from all over the place. I feel like every space I come into throughout life I pick up a chosen family member or two.
Anonymous
My chosen family reminds me there is good in the world and that I am worthy of love.
Joseph Hall
In Quebec city the LGBTA community is very strong if you live downtown. But unfortunately for me, I am far from this community. I go to college and the community is not very important in number. We are so few. I hope that one day young people, and older too, will have the courage to be proud of who they are without the fear of being judged. And I hope that the people that are bringing this fear by their close-mindedness will discover the world as I see it... BEAUTIFUL. Let's hope tomorrow is gonna be a better day for the LGBTA community in my country.
Eleonore Baron Manningham from Quebec City, Canada
My chosen family reminds me that I am deserving and capable of unconditional love. I honor them by showing that love to my own blood family, even when it isn't reciprocated.
Joe from Madrid, Spain
My chosen family is an amazing, inspiring group of youth at the Spectrum Youth Group in Ottawa, Ontario. I love them all so much.
Jay Chew from Ottawa, Ontario
My real family are those I have met along the way in my life and where I have found peace and this continues to this day despite being born in 1963.
Lisa Ward from Southend, Essex, UK
My chosen family guides me through their shared sense of both freedom and security to explore who I am, make my own mistakes as they make theirs, learn and regret and apologize without extrinsic oppressive forces of fear and shame as I know I am part of an ecosystem that forgives the missteps involved in the process of growth.
Acc from Oregon
Acceptance, encouragement, recognition, compliments and acknowledgment of individual rights, gifts, and freedoms are characteristics of my chosen family. I honored them by helping to establish a community group in a very conservative location — Williamsburg, VA. We have been in existence in various forms since 1992. I am proud to be a part of Lavender Light.
Allison Wildridge from Williamsburg, Virginia
My chosen family are the people that pick me up and remind me what I am able to achieve. The ones that inspire and influence me to be the best that I can be. The ones that love me unconditionally.
Chance Conley from San Francisco
My chosen family are the people I was blessed enough to chose. They are the people I admire and care for. They are the people who feel like home.
David Jamal from Toronto, Canada
They give me the strength to speak up for what is right and be the best person I can be. Without my chosen family, I don't think I'd be alive today. I've become the compassionate and caring one in my family.
Briauna from Dublin, CA
They love and accept me no matter what. Rebecca & William Wortham I love you.
Levi Asher Wortham from San Francisco
My chosen family supports and nurtures me. I can depend on my chosen more than blood. In many ways, my chosen matters more to me. I am grateful to have these people in my life.
Melissa from Pennsylvania
Mi familia es muy grande, soy dichosa por ello. Mi familia son mis amigues trans que he hecho desde mi transicion, mi esposo norteamericano, su familia judia y mi familia biologica costarricense. Soy migrante, vivo en Nueva York, tengo 23 años y studio Trabajo Social. Soy también una mujer trans y feminist, pero soy mucho más que solo un término.
Anonymous from New York