On View: 'Homosexuality Is Stalin's Atom Bomb to Destroy America'

Here's an exhibition at the Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea that sounds fascinating:

Controversially titled "Homosexuality is Stalin's Atom Bomb to Destroy America" by Post-Soviet conceptual artist Yevgeniy Fiks, the exhibition profoundly looks at the interlocking histories of anticommunist and homophobic sentiments during the McCarthy era. Though the show looks at U.S. history, it posits a timely critique of Russia's efforts to repress LGBT rights, and, similarly, American rhetoric against homosexuals. (Through March 16.) More info HERE.  

On View: Winkleman Gallery | Yevgeniy Fiks | Homosexuality Is Stalin's Atom Bomb to Destroy America from GalleryLOG on Vimeo.

Taking its title from a 1953 article by the Cold Warrior and pundit Arthur Guy Mathews, this exhibition explores the historical and ideological links between anti-Communism and homophobia in the United States, as well as the intersections between Communism and sexual identity as it played out during the 20th century. Works in the exhibition range from dry factuality to humorous and farcical, and posit the 20th century queerness as the shared "Other" of the Communism-Capitalism dichotomy, while tracing the uneasy yet tangible historical links between the early 20th century Communist activism and the gay rights movement of the second half of the century.

 The exhibition delves into the interlocking histories of the “Red” and “Lavender” scares during the McCarthy-era, when anti-Communist and anti-gay sentiments were fused together in the Cold War witch-hunt rhetoric. Pundits and government officials went as far as envisioning a sinister conspiracy: the Soviet Union is promoting homosexuality as a tool to destroy America. Concurrently, the federal government purged homosexuals that it employed, calling them “security risks”—vulnerable of being blackmailed by Soviet agents into working for them. Ironically, in response to and mirroring its ideological enemy, the American Communist Party also purged known gays from its ranks—marking them as “security risks”—for fear that gay Communists were vulnerable to blackmail and could become informants for the Feds. The official charter of the Communist Party USA even before its 1950s anti-gay purge strictly prohibited gays from membership, adhering to the policies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union where homosexuality was officially criminalized under Stalin and stigmatized as a "capitalist degeneracy."