Femme4Femme is a love letter. Dedicated to the soft femmes, the hard femmes, the femmes of colour, the loud femmes, the femmes with disabilities, the overworked, underpaid, and exhausted femmes. A collaboration between Morgan Sears-­‐Williams and Maddie Alexander, Femme4Femme examines, critiques and honours the existence of queer Femme people, bodies, lives and identities.

The artists explore both the historical and contemporary existence of femme identity through a multi-­‐disciplinary and interactive space. Femme4Femme includes work by Alexander and Sears-­‐Williams accompanied by a constructed environment calling upon queer aesthetics which provoke and invite viewers into their femme-­‐centered living room. Through text, image, sculpture, and environmental installation, the artists reference queer coding, love, lived experiences, cruising, sex, and the intersections of femmephobia or misogyny.

Morgan uses older technologies such as a Rolodex or rotary telephone as an entry point for viewers to engage with the stories of queer femme folks by using interactivity to create a different relationship between object, content and viewer. Personal stories, historical and contemporary events populate the cards in the rolodex, blending time and creating a thread of feminist queer activism and lived experiences challenging the notion that queer feminist activism or femme presence exist within a certain time period. The rotary telephones are used to hold audio conversations speaking as a confessional, a private and intimate space created between the listener and the speaker.

Maddie pulls from pop culture, pornography and queer coding, using oversaturated imagery to explore representation of queer femmes in the media. Alexander explores micro aggressive language in a satirical manner, to break down the subtleties of femmephobia in film and television. The nuances of queer coding are played with in the sculptures, text and found fabrics which speak to the complexities of cruising and dating as a queer femme person. Alexander’s work also explores themes of safer sex practices for queer and trans people.

Maddie and Morgan both explore themes of archiving, documentation, queer bodies, and femme identity. The works interact with each other to display the efforts of archiving queer life from the artist’s perspective, and the importance of visibility and existence as resistance.

Femme4Femme is a multidisciplinary conversation between Maddie and Morgan’s works, both artists investigate contemporary and historical queer narrative, and question the implicit roles expected of queer femmes. While Femme4Femme comments on femme visibility and culture, it also in itself becomes a space of queer femme resistance.

Pin Bar, Calgary AB, part of FemmeWave Festival, 2019

Arquives, Nuit Rose Festival, Toronto, 2017

Artist Talk with Maddie Alexander, Images Festival, Toronto, 2020