Alejandro Magallanes
Brant
Schuller
Christmas Print
Sale
Daryl
Rydman
Daryl
Vocat
Denis
Lessard
Libby
Hague
Michiko
Suzuki
Nick
Dobson
Self
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review from Edmonton Journal, click here for PDF
review from VUE MAGAZINE, April 3-10 2003
Perfectly Normal
Daryl Vocat transforms a Boy Scout manual into a diary of gay awakening
Scout's honour
Most childhood memories unravel into unrecognizable fragments preserved only
in faded snapshots. But I do have one unphotographable memory that remains
as vivid as if it happened yesterday. It's the memory of the first time I found
myself secretly and shamefully attracted to a boy in my school. This boy was
mean and unruly; I couldn't fathom why my eyes were continually drawn to him.
It was frightening to be carried along by a new and alien surge of attraction,
as if some wind were sweeping me away. Thirty-five years later, the source
of sexual feelings is no less mysterious and only slightly less frightening.
It's hard to imagine what it would have been like if those feelings were prompted
by someone of my own gender, while all around me words like gay, homo and fag
were being flung at other children.
This is the setting Daryl Vocat's show Perfectly Normal
transports us into. The viewer becomes the young boy who is gazing
into a mirror, his face filled with hope, turmoil and self-doubt;
what he sees reflected back is the word FAG scribbled across his
reflection. Vocat's images glow with the straightforward integrity
of childhood while deftly sidestepping any tedious, didactic socio-political
commentary on the status of gay people in a predominantly heterosexual
culture. Using simple, innocent line drawings inspired by a Boy Scout
manual, Vocat takes us back to a secretive, primal moment: the time
when a torrent of sexual feelings first emerges in childhood like
some underground stream bubbling to the surface. With poignant humor,
Vocat creates an entirely unique version of a Boy Scout manual. He
depicts, in his words, the confusion, hope, wonder and awkwardness
of growing up queer. I grew up with that imagery, says Vocat, who
joined the Scouts when he was five and stayed in the organization
until he was 17. I use it to tell a story of an experience.
Sex is larger than life for all adolescents, but for
gay youth that amplification takes a vicious twist. Everything you
know about being queer is exaggerated, says Vocat. In the boy culture,
growing up, we were teased about being gay whether we were or we
weren't.... None of us knew what that meant. In the print Crossing
the Gap, a boy is wearily drawing the word gay in the sand. Looming
above him are a pierced ear, a bent wrist and poppers. To him, that
is what being gay is about: a limp wrested, flamboyant dresser. I
didn't relate to the stereotypes, Vocat explains, but the stereotypes
were all that I had to understand who I was.
Not all the silkscreens in Vocat's show portray events
that he experienced, but the The Silent Spot' is one that he does
relate to. It illustrates a boy writing a suicide note. [I have]
gone through the experience of being very angry, very alone in the
world and hopeless, he says. For a lot of queer youth there aren't
a lot of resources. You can't go to your parents. Chances are your
parents will reject you and be upset with you. I wanted to take this
[experience] that was very private and make it very public, to say
that people are going through this.
The first time Vocat announced his sexuality out loud was a weird and scary
experience. It's like admitting that this is who you are but also not understanding
what it means, he says, because all the images and ideas about who gay people
are came from people who are anti-gay. It is important to take that step, but
it is sad, because there is still a lot of internalized hatred. The first time
he finally spoke the words I am gay, Vocat says, they seemed foreign. Words
were followed by fear; fear of everyone hearing him, being able to see through
him.
Thankfully, Vocat did not succumb to that fear. Instead,
with childlike honesty, Vocat peels away the layers of encrusted
memory and exposes the earliest stirrings of his sexuality. V
by AGNIESZKA MATEJK
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