SAVAGED pINK. A History of 90s Gay Media
A project by Adrian Newell Păun, Adrian Șchiop, Vlad Viski
Curated by Cristina Bogdan
Opening: Saturday, 17 February 2018, 6 pm
The exhibition can be viewed from 17 February to 31 March 2018.
tranzit.ro/ Iaşi
Al. Lăpușneanu Street, No. 7-9
Using Adrian Newell Păun’s personal archive, the exhibition sheds light on different attempts to build a gay press in an era when homosexuality and “homosexual propaganda” were criminalized in the Penal Code. In 1992, Adrian Păun places an ad in widely circulated local newspaper Evenimentul Zilei, announcing the creation of a gay pen club. The first public presentation of this archive of correspondence offers an exceptional insight into the private life of Romanian gays in those years.
The 1990s can be defined as the Golden Age of print media, with newspapers selling hundreds of thousands of copies throughout Romania. Soon information about gays started popping up. Letters to the editor, personals, boys looking for “long term friendship”, zealous reporters chasing the exotic, the illegal. In April 1993, Gay45, the first gay newspaper, sees the light of day. The erotica media hosts generous information about homosexuals as well.
The exhibition was originally presented at the ODD project space in Bucharest, and now it arrives for the first time at tranzit.ro/ Iași with new elements from the local gay local press in Iași. What were the gay cruising places in Iași, what were the attempts to strengthen the local community, what did it mean to be gay in 90s Iași? These are just a few of the questions we will try to answer in "SAVAGED pINK. A History of 90s Gay Media”.
The exhibition is part of LGBT History Month.
