One of the first pieces you’ll encounter in “Binary Lore” is Edie Fake‘s LGBTIQUA, which consists of a word formed from eight pastel-toned octagons, each one containing a single letter. The octagons are staggered in a way that makes you want to recombine them. Read left to right, the letters spell the nonsensical QITAULBG, but if you mix the order up you’ll find words like LAB and QUIT; if you follow a zigzagging line, the word QUILTBAG emerges. It may sound like a slang name for a body part, but QUILTBAG is in fact an acronym for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer; the term is viewed by some in the queer community as more inclusive than “LGBT”—it literally holds more.
Each marquee arrangement is made up of several units that can be reconfigured in countless ways. As installed now, they look like superenlarged fragments of those QR codes that seem to be popping up everywhere, including on museum walls. QR codes—themselves configurations of modules made up of individual black or white dots—are capable of holding several hundred times’ more information than conventional bar codes can. As it turns out, QR codes and QUILTBAGs have a lot more in common than you’d think.
Work by Edie Fake and MSHR
Through 8/3
Threewalls, 119 N. Peoria #2C
three-walls.org free
