The Cloak is Ours, 2023
The Cloak is Ours, is an installation and performance work made of 16,000+ pinback buttons pinned to canvas. The work is a visual reflection on aspects of queer culture and community. A pinback button is typically worn on jackets, t-shirts, or bags and signals a part of someone's identity. For years, LGBTQIA+ people have used the pinback button to vocalize who they are or what they believe in. The Cloak is Ours, uses pinback button to echo that history. Instead of incasing a message on the button, the shiny raw material reflects the viewer and surroundings. The hazy mirroring effect of the button offers a moment of reflection and, once performed, acts as a sequined-like inflated disco ball. The performer attempts to turn and move but is confind by the weight of the cloak. The armor-like rectangle has humor and sadness, turning at the performer's breath. The name of the work is an homage to the Publication Gay Sunshine: The Bars are Ours.
Cover of Gay Sunshine, October 1970
The Laws for Falling Bodies: A Queer Print Media Exhibition. Curated by Shawn Bitters and Mathew Garcia
“Kat Richards prompts us to see our bodies as abstractions, disrupting taxonomies and systems of classification through ambiguous and uncanny forms. We move close in order to interrogate the object for signs of something we recognize, something we aren’t sure is real, and in the process the failure of mimicry is revealed. Richards created a cloak from thousands of small buttons, reflective surfaces on which a print is potentially placed and worn to signal political alliances. Here, the collective buttons become an ambiguous surface for the reflection of the viewer’s body and environment. In turn, the cloak becomes a space itself in which multiple viewers may be together, or under which someone may arm themself against the fixing gaze.”
– Lex Morgan Lancaster