"A Bookstore is Not a Bar"

2019: digital print and video installation.

A collaborative project of Eloisa Aquino and Jenny Lin, “A Bookstore is not a Bar” consists of a short video and wall-mounted prints, as a reflection on the subject of queer bookstores and censorship. Taking inspiration from the fonds of Montreal’s L’Androgyne bookstore collective, the video is a thought collage on queer politics, the demise of the physical queer bookstore around the world, and the significance of printed matter. The project specifically responds with image and text to Canadian censorship laws that have affected the passage of queer books across borders, and points to discrepancies in judgment around sex, sexuality, the body and identity.

This project was created on invitation by curators Virginie Joudain and Véronique Boillard with assistance from kimura byol, for “Presence is Absent / Absence is Present”, a group exhibition of works created by artists responding to the Archives Gaies du Québec (Montreal). The work was exhibited at Never Apart, Montreal, from July - Sept 2019.

The zine, "Queer Banned Books", 2019, was created from the drawings made originally for this installation. The zine was designed by Eloisa Aquino.