The Queer Spirit Podcast

Episode 18:
Art for Healing the Past & Writing a New Future
with Rudy Loewe

 

 

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Rudy Loewe is a visual artist utilizing drawing, painting and printmaking as a means of building narrative and contributing to dialogues on social themes. They work with large scale, sometimes directly onto surfaces that then ensure their temporality; as well as small scale in forms such as publications.

The work itself is bright and colorful, referencing aesthetics from the Afro Caribbean diaspora. 

It also represents different kinds of bodies, highlighting differing races; non conforming genders; sexualities; classes and (dis)ability. Rudy makes the work that reflects the narratives they would like to see in the world, the histories that are not getting the visibility or care that they deserve.  

Episode Highlights

  • Rudy shares how they grew up in a family of artists, but was the first to make a living from art, starting with making comics.
  • They talk about using comics as a way to get art and the narratives of art, to those who wouldn’t normally access other kinds of art.
  • Using art to tell the kinds of stories they want to see in the world, especially for queer POC and others who aren’t normally depicted.
  • Workshops Rudy has facilitated to teach others to create zines exploring gender, sexuality and mental health.
  • The way art helps one have access to, and explore the language of identity when words are not quite right.
  • Rudy’s zine sharing about their polarized experiences in therapy, to help people understand more about how to be mindful as a consumer of therapy. (view Bad Therapy, Rad Therapy)
  • How mental health symptoms vary for different kinds populations and identities.
  • The exploration of Afrofuturism and black feminist utopias in Rudy’s art; the importance of telling POC stories in history, and removing white supremacy from images of the future. (Here is an image of the piece we refer to when discussing Afrofuturism.)

 

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