Queer Graphics

Since the 1950s, Brussels’ LGBTQI+ communities have been developing a visual language that ensures visibility for their members and activities. This visual grammar translates and conveys commitments to shared identities and values. It informs and represents, conceals and reveals, recognizes and meets, subverts and challenges, shares joys and sorrows, celebrates, flirts and loves. Marked by struggle and celebration, agitation and compromise, graphic design becomes a tool of resistance, recognition and resilience. Evolving over the decades, it promotes alternative forms of community.

Through a wide range of objects and documents, Queer Graphics delves into the visual and cultural history of everyday life, driven by the activism of individuals, communities, associations and groups. It takes a fresh look at the history of LGBTQI+ communities.

The book is structured around 7 thematic chapters: Naming, Visibilizing, Fabricating, Subverting, Recognizing, Revealing and Informing.

The project was developed by the Design Museum Brussels and ULB’s Structure de recherche interdisciplinaire sur le genre, l’égalité et la sexualité (STRIGES), with support from the Archives de la Ville de Bruxelles, Carhif-AVG and Fonds Suzan Daniel*.