16 Nicholson Street

12/05/2022

Salon 16 has been a fortnightly meeting of young queer artists from around Glasgow. We have met with 12 different young people across the past 4 months. Salon 16 was devised with the intention to support emerging queer talent and facilitate a space for new networks of connection to grow. The subject of discussion was initially divised and facilitated then developed in response to the group’s interests. This took us on an interesting journey across various queer 20th century video artists.

Comparisons began to emerge between the works, leading us to investigate the different experiences of being gay and queer while expressing gender differently, how queerness interacts with nature/technology and how past/present representation of queer identities sit with the artists. 

As we delved deeper into the topics, personal stories began to emerge and the artists seemed to be looking into themselves and began articulating their own conceptions of queerness. When we turned towards the final presentation and the artists started working on their own pieces in response to the themes of the discussions, the duality of revealing and concealing seemed to crop up as a unifying aspect of both the discussions and queer identity in wider society. From this we chose the humorous ‘Coming In and Out’ to encapsulate this position of how queersness operates as both an interior and exterior position in the world and how it comes to affect our social lives, memories, experiences and artistic expression.

We hope you enjoy the night!

If you would like to get involved in a future event, please email Thomas at engagement.16nicholsonstreet@gmail.com

You can find out more about Salon 16 on our website https://16nicholsonstreet.org/community-project/salon16/