QUEER DEITY IX (Kinship and Food Sharing)
D Rosen
2023
Cast Glass
1.5 x 4.5 x 1.5 in.
Image Description –
The faces of two Vampire Bats are cast in glass. Their tongues are touching. The glass sculpture is black with white speckles along the edges of their faces. Red streams of glass run over the faces of the Bats. It has a soft satin finish. The sculpture rests on a rocky grey textured concrete background.
VAMP
work by D Rosen
November 2 – December 1, 2024
On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P
Opening Reception
Saturday, November 2nd
4 – 7 P
Join us in celebration of the opening of D Rosen’s solo exhibition - VAMP
QUEER DEITY IX (Abstraction/Embrace)
D Rosen
2023
Cast Glass
14 x 3.5 x 0.5 in.
Image Description –
The image shows an abstract sculpture of two Vampire Bats hanging together. The work is made out of cast glass. It has a soft stain finish. The abstract form contains delicate wing textures that wrap around a looped form. A “d” shaped loop rests above the form in cast glass and will be used to hang the piece.The glass sculpture is black with white small areas of white glass peeking out from the details. Red streams of glass run over the entire elongated form. The sculpture rests on a rocky grey textured concrete background.
Vampire Bats shed light on the ubiquity of queerness within human, animal, and more-than-human worlds. Reciprocal feeding is an armature that sustains clusters of Vampire Bat colonies. Queer behaviors include feeding, grooming, and same-sex pair bonding extending beyond normative kinship relations.
States of survival are heavy cloaks under which queer and trans beings estranged from blood families often find ourselves exposed in daylight, burning. Yet Vampire Bats reciprocally feed fellow Bats with whom they are not directly genetically related.
Blood is sustenance shared between
those not traditionally tethered by blood.
A momentary red burst of fluid from one tongue to another.
A blood transfusion; life support.
Scientists were curious as to why Vampire Bats engage in such evolutionarily costly and potentially fatal behavior. Vampire Bats cannot survive for more than two days without food. Deepening the confusion, reciprocal feeding appears to bear no direct impact on an individual Bat’s familial or reproductive bloodline.
To test their theories, scientists starved—to be painfully fair, the authors used the word fasted—Bats in labs to gain insights into the benefits of sharing. Is torture necessary to prove that love and sharing make the world survivable? Queer and trans people often survive exclusively through non-normative kinship and care among our fellow nightwalkers.
We, VAMPS, feed together.
A flaunting smile from the—reciprocally—undead.
The Bat biologist Dr. Merlin Tuttle stated that the greatest threat to Bat populations worldwide is human fear. Thousands of Bats are exterminated in a single blaze, burned alive in caves. Humans are afraid of Bats as mythical transmitters of rabies, when in fact, one is ten times more likely to contract rabies from a domesticated Dog than a Bat.
Given the number of anti-trans bills over the last three years, I would argue that in the United States, like Bats, one of the greatest threats to the survival of queer and trans humans is human fear.
The transmissibility of zoonotic diseases quickly reminds humans how truly animal we are, how fragile we are, and how easily we may disappear. Yet, if the light is turned to highlight a gentler angle, we may see the beauty of interconnection outlined by our porous animal bodies.
Animal is not a term of reduction.
We, VAMPS, need community.
Hunger for touch that alights more care than contagion.
—a cluster — a culture —
—of less biting, more sharing, a respite—
Climate change rapidly impacts the migration patterns of Vampire Bats, flying mammals, who are moving further north as temperatures rise. Queer and trans people, especially QTBIPOC people, experience homelessness and housing instability at a higher rate than cis people. In the United States, there is an internal refugee crisis as trans people try to migrate from uninhabitable states.
Abandoned iron mine shafts have become important homes for global Bat populations. Iron is in our mammalian blood; with hepcidin, Vampire Bats find balance. We, VAMPS, build homes together in elemental interstices.
A chiaroscuro play of light and shadow on a planetary scale.
Vampire Bats are sanguivorous, feeding exclusively on blood. Various species of Bats play vital roles within our shared ecosystems, including in insect management, which is exacerbated by rising temperatures. Bats are also important pollinators. If you have ever eaten a banana, you have benefited from chiropterophily or the pollination of plants by Bats, along with many humans who are often underpaid and exploited. The violence of Western food systems could easily induce regurgitation.
When the psychic pitch is too loud, VAMPS molt into a new form.
We, VAMPS, keep learning to repurpose our peels.
A nightly disgorge of the false shadows
that cast monsters—
iron tongues, untangled
to sire a teething
VAMP
we,
shape the lathes of reciprocity,
beyond species,
beyond category,
beyond blood.
QUEER DEITY IX (Play and Pairing)
D Rosen
2023
Cast Glass
7 x 7.5 x 0.5 in.
Image Description –
The top half of the bodies of two Vampire Bats are cast in glass. Their mouths are open; one arm dangles down from each side of the sculpture. It looks as though the Bats are joined together at the wing. The glass sculpture is black with many white speckles and streams of glass. It has a soft stain finish. The sculpture rests on a rocky grey textured concrete background.
D Rosen lives on the stolen and occupied lands of the Council of the Three Fires, known as Chicago, IL. They operate from the position that questions of animality are not binary but rather a tangle of ecologies and richly complicated identities framed by culture. Publications include “Gorgets: Trans Hummingbirds and Iridescent Echos,” Queering Nature, Antennae (2024); “Chrysanthemum Powder and Other Interspecies Scent Rituals,” Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance, Routledge (2021); and “fashioning the undead,” A Trace of Fashioned Violence (2020). Exhibitions include Elemental Impressions of Interspecies Care, of Violence, ACRE Projects, Chicago (2024); Lunglike Shadows, Arnarhlíð 1, Reykjavík (2023); and In Spite of Enclosures, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; S12 and USF Verftet, Bergen, Norway; JOYA, Parque Natural Sierra María, Los Vélez, Spain; and HEIMA, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. Rosen received grants from The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (2021 and 2024), the IL Arts Council (2020), and the Nordic Summer University (2020).
QUEER DEITY IX (Outstreched Wing)
D Rosen
2023
Cast Glass
11 x 9.5 x 1 in.
Image Description –
One cast glass Vampire Bat is laying on a rocky grey textured concrete background. One of the Bat’s wings is outstretched; their face is in a profile view. The glass sculpture is black with white small areas of white glass peeking out from the details. Red streams of glass run over the entire elongated form. The piece has a soft satin finish.
VAMP exhibition and programming were partially funded by a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), Individual Artists Program in 2024.
Thank you to all of the people and organizations who supported or helped bring this work into being, including:
USF Verftet
S12
Firebird Community Arts
Jason Raynard
Andrew Bearnot
Luin Joy Sherman
Kirien Eyma
Carlin Homes
Kitty Rauth
Caitlin Wagner
Ruth K. Burke
Sonya Bernitz
Nadia John
Mel Cook
Levi Shand
Related Programming
BiG SiSSY (a)live
Friday, November 15th
Doors 8 p
Show 8:30 – 9:30 p
On a night where the strange and spectacular intertwine, BiG SiSSY takes the stage for BiG SiSSY (a)live—a performance weaving live original music, drag, and performance art. Presented in conjunction with D Rosen’s exhibition VAMP, exploring the queer and uncanny through the lens of vampire bats, the evening promises an intimate, raw exploration of identity and expression. Set against the backdrop of VAMP at Comfort Station, BiG SiSSY brings their singular energy and vision to create a space where sound, art, and performance meet the liminal and unknown.