Just Look At Me
Laura Williams
In this piece my aim was to showcase how LGBT+ individuals get misrepresented in media. The “queer” characters shown on screen rarely represent the authentic experience of being a queer individual. My focus is to bring awareness to this misrepresentation and take pride in what being queer means even if we aren’t able to see it on the screen majority of the time. This idea came to me after watching a certain television program and realising how the writing mocks its LGBT+ fan base, who’s interested in the show has kept it alive, for theorising and seeing themselves represented in a character. Queer people are more than just a selling point for ‘diversity’, just to be killed off as a plot device erasing the representation further. Devan Shimoyama inspired the visuals for this piece through his bold use of colour and self-expression in his vibrant self-portraits depicting black queer culture.