Tender nests: Queer ecology in the midwestern Anthropocene

Abstract

This body of work explores a queer ecology of the midwestern Anthropocene. Inspired by the often-overlooked queerness of midwestern ecosystems, my work situates these beings within the era of climate change, noting the precarity of species and ecosystems on the brink and the collapse of traditional borders between the natural and unnatural, the human and non-human, the local and the global. I work with queerness both as a subject of representation, illustrating queer forms of reproduction and sexual transition, as well as a creative practice: rejecting straight orientations and unified surfaces, creating camouflage to evoke the idea of queer passing or flagging, and focusing on the multispecies tangles that complicate heteronormative readings of identity, origin, and evolution. By drawing parallels between queer and Anthropocenic figures and ways of making I aim to make visible an experience of midwestern queerness and climate change that acknowledges the threats we face while centering survival strategies for a sustainable future.