This photo-poster aims to articulate and interrogate the complexities, struggles and an often-overlooked history which parallels Canadian modern graphic design and queer liberation. At an immediate glance, modern graphic design carries a superficial enamel limiting to a rote of formal function and reduced symbols, diminishing any possibility for nuance and deeper connection, as if all logic aims to be outsourced to a disarming complacency.
Drawing inspiration from the The Critical Approach (1964) cover design by Gerhard Doerrié from the Canada Modern collection, this photo-poster entitled Liberated Target adapts the series of three concentric circles to reflect and convey the struggles of queer dysaffordance, a process of deliberately denying one’s own truth and that of others, in order to gain acceptance via conformity, and assume access to dignity as well as safety by your immediate community and society at large.
This photo-poster references the history of the “Fruit Machine” and its government-led purging of queers from public life and service in the 1950s and ‘60s. Layered and arranged in the poster image are three tea towels with circular targets donning its surface. Each towel holds its own target, yet collectively, through the many folds and layers, is expressed as an augmented and demented unity, sadly characterizing a monoculture of a marginalized minority seeking to escape a labyrinth. The title, Liberated Target, exemplifies the punitive nature of deviating into critical thought within a close-knit community and monoculture, raising questions of who has permission to critique and whose criticism leaves who vulnerable.
Canadian history is littered with oppression and suffering, yet openly acknowledging these struggles can come at a great risk. The act of conjuring a spectrum of concepts about one’s history of oppression can be affirming, but also emotionally laborious, and with only the potential “rewards” of further ostracization. This can be in the form of barriers to employment, workplace and diversity politics, misgendering, a lack of pee acknowledgement and even the professionialization of LGBTQ health services. The act of ignoring such complexities serves as evidence of their existence, only to amplify the need to be critical of design language.
The use of tea towels is a node to the mundane and campy rhetoric which queer people have historically used to cope with the vilification of their collective identity, imposed neglect and cries for love. This practice and legacy can be found in AIDS activism from groups such as Gran Fury’s repurposing of the ‘80s Plymouth police squad cars to Hal Fischer’s Gay Semiotics, a visual investigation into masculine personas associated with objects and, more notably observed through the progressive acceptance of drag-performance art into mainstream culture. At a micro and citizen level, this has been best observed as a personal opinion, among young people organizing to create radical zine content. From vegetarian food-making to coping with sexual assault and gender dysmorphia; it is the clever utilization of limited resources that leads towards subversive and critical perspectives.
Modern Canadian graphic design holds a series of opportunities to engage with identity politics and be critical of history. In reference to the Canada Modern collection and Fruit Machine, future design practices and education offer potential strategies to expand the design vernacular towards realms of political contention and critical self-reflection rather than inducing passive and simplified visual forms of consensual neglect.
