Ketch Wehr

Ketch will explore the importance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer (LGBTIQ) icons and queer visibility for youth in the LGBTIQ community and record the lost or forgotten histories of young queer survival. He will interview members of local Philadelphia LGBTIQ communities about the icon or person that helped them survive their youth- that beacon of otherness that got them through what can be the hardest time in a LGBTIQ person’s life. The visual work will be a series of diptych (dual) portraits of his interviewees when they were young and the accompanying person or icon that bolstered them. To involve the community and increase visibility, he will screenprint a book/zine containing these interviews and portraits to be distributed in queer (and not explicitly queer) spaces. There will also be a website and a downloadable PDF file of the book/zine to make it widely accessible. Ketch’s project also aims to show the strength and beauty of queer identity, which he feels cannot be stressed enough.