Today I want to show you my home office. This is where I spend my morning updating Feminine Moments. Please keep sharing your queer/lesbian art news with me. I love your emails!

Hugs + kisses,

Birthe Havmoeller

July 2010. think that it is time for a bit of storytelling. I created Feminine Moments because I felt that the world – especially the lesbian and queer communities needed a coherent body of resources about contemporary art made by lesbians and queer female artists. This art blog is non-profit and a labour of love. I wanted to do some positive storytelling about lesbian/queer art instead of supporting the deep sigh of sorrow by many queer writers, curators and art critiques: ‘The lesbian artists are invisible. We can’t present them and their works of art…’ and the sigh of relief by the museum directors and gallerists, who don’t have to say: ‘No we don’t present nor do we want to present “lesbian art”. It is too… lesbian, political, feminist, explicit and incorrect… for our favourite (target) group of visitors.’ – I hope that you enjoy my art blog.

I Have Two Visions for Feminine Moments:

1# Vision
is to create a queer art blog about artists, art projects and queer art events around the world. I hope that the art blog will bring greater appreciation of lesbian/queer art and the lifestyle of queer women and lesbians in general. For years lesbian/queer art news were difficult to spot in the mainstream medias as well as in the gay press. I guess many women within the lesbian communities must have felt as starving as I did… but starving for something is not just a bad thing, when you can see that it will come to an end: It created the urge for me to launch this art blog and I hope that the articles published at Feminine Moments will satisfy some of your hunger for queer art news and make your happy.

Now, two years after I launched this blog, I am contacted almost every week by amazing queer artists, who send me information about their latest art projects, – but for me to manifest the full potential of my dream I need a team of women, who know what is going on at their local queer art scene in their city/state/country, and who are willing to dedicate a few minutes to Feminine Moments by taking their time to forward their local press releases to me. If your are a person with access to lesbian/queer art news. Do send the press releases and other pieces of news to Feminine Moments: havmoeller@gmail.com
I also invite women bloggers, queer art students and other writers with an interest in writing about contemporary lesbian/queer art to become guest writers at Feminine Moments and make your own posts at Feminine Moments queer art blog.

Feminine Moments Is A Collaborative Art Project
It grows, when the arts resources are given to me for publication at this website, – thus, Dear readers, Share your resources with me. Send all what you have got! If you are a Facebook enthusiast, I invite you to join the Feminine Moments – out and proud art by lesbian & queer women artists group at Facebook. In this group you may post a link on the wall, whenever you have a piece of art news, which you think may be of interest to the members of the group or of interest to the readers of Feminine Moments.

2# Vision
for Feminine Moments is that it will turn into a platform, a virtual or physical space for lesbians and queer arts professionals to get to know each other and experience all the benefits of having lesbian/queer colleagues. I don’t know yet how to go about realizing this vision/dream about creating a nice space for networking with other queer arts professionals, as the most strong and sustainable networks usually rely on the members meeting each other, which probably will be kind of difficult, when the potential members of this network are scattered all over the world. Organizing queer arts conferences and seminars for the members of my dream-network-to-be are to say the least somewhat unrealistic. What I am doing at the moment until I get a better idea is working on Feminine Moments index of lesbian/queer fine art links, hoping that making us more visible to each other may spark some informal networking among the artists featured in Feminine Moments’ index of art link. New links are most welcome.

Do I Have An Editorial Strategy?
Besides my two visions, which I have just shared with you, I guess that it has a lot to do with happy coincidence, which pieces of news that makes it to the art blog. If you feel that this art blog lacks focus on your favourite niche of queer art or local area, then it is usually, because I lack the arts resources or the right contacts…, but when an out artist writes to me, I am always curious and say: Yes, please, send me an artist statement and some photos of your artworks, and let us work together on making an article about you for publication at Feminine Moments’ queer art blog.

Tell your creative friends and colleagues about Feminine Moments, they may not have visited this art blog yet. I don’t have time for designing PR campaigns for Feminine Moments, and I am not an expert on viral marketing, so I rely on you spreading the word about Feminine Moments.
Love and kisses,

Birthe Havmoeller

In the 1990′ies everybody did gender, but now gender as an art theme has had its 15 minutes of fame, and we are back to square one: art made by queer women artists is ignored by the art world. It is a big backslash that the art world isn’t open and curious any more. It has become increasingly difficult for women artists to get shown and discussed at the moment, let alone out queer women artists. Where the curators once tried to accommodate some women in their art shows more and more art shows are now unapologetically male.

The zeitgeist has also changed the artists themselves. Out artists are less inclined to take up themes such as gender and sexuality in their art works and I think that the political/ feminist elements of their works are more subtle. They don’t want to stand out and be ‘the queer artist’ of an art show.

When looking at the art shows, which the LGBTQ organizations around the world organize, I can see more and better shows. And the presentation of art made by out women artists seems to have increased. At least, we aren’t as invisible as artists in our own communities, as we used to be. The LGBTQ organizations, which were born as political organizations seems to have come to the age, where they can embrace art both as a political tool and as an important asset for the community. – We need to know our visual artist, like we know and love our filmmakers and writers.

For the last couple of years some of the LGBTQ art show curators have made shows about utopias in an attempt to make out artists create visions / visual art about an ideal society. There is for example ‘Queertopia’ in Canada, ‘Homotopia’ in GB, ‘Cronotopia’ in USA and ‘Queeristan’ in Holland. If you know more about these visionary shows and artworks, I would love to hear your story.

Looking back at the artists, whom I have been in contact with for the last year, those that stand out most are the fighters, who are making queer art shows in countries, where nobody has opened a queer art show before or documenting a queer/lesbian lifestyle out of an urge to see more create a visual history and a queer iconography for their communities.

Happy International Women’s day to all of you!

Love and kisses,

Birthe Havmoeller