Birthe Havmoeller: The Story About Feminine Moments

Trige, Denmark, July 2010.

Birthe Havmoeller: I think that it is time for a bit of storytelling. I created Feminine Moments in 2003, 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 sighs 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 sighs 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 “queer feminist art”. It is too… lesbian, political, feminist, explicit and incorrect… for our favourite (target) group of visitors.’

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 on my resource site, 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.

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 me and the members of the group.

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 in real life, 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.

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. However, I am always curious, so, 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. My editorial strategy is to present visual art projects and art books by queer women artists. I don’t present more mainstream LGBT film, books, music videos, etc.

Tell your creative friends and colleagues about Feminine Moments, they may not have visited this art blog yet; do share the link on facebook. I rely much on you spreading the word about Feminine Moments.
Love and kisses,

Birthe Havmoeller