A vivid mural celebrating QUT’s LGBTIQA+ community has been installed at the Kelvin Grove campus to celebrate International Pride Month.
Designed the Brisbane university’s Creative Industries students, Through the Screen draws on the students’ experience of exploring their identity through digital mediums.
Lead artist and co-creator Caroline Girdler said the work featured traditional mural techniques and digital augmentation.
The largely purple and pink mural celebrates digital spaces such as video games and the internet through a digital avatar to create different appearances, bodies, genders, and experiences.
Ms Girdler said pop-up windows showing the avatars with manipulated glitch effects symbolised a deviation from what was seen as the norm.
“Working with a team who each have such different art backgrounds as well as a unique point of view in regard to how they identify with the queer community has been such a joy,” Girdler said.
“Just knowing this mural is going to be seen by so many LGBTQIA+ people is an amazing feeling and in turn, I hope that they feel seen too.”
Co-creator James Hua, who works mostly as a digital artist, said he enjoyed being pushed out of his comfort zone.
“This experience has taught me new skills that I would’ve never had the chance to achieve, such as working with physical paints and thinking more critically about my art in a queer and real-life sense,” Hua said.
“Also, to be able to paint a mural to highlight my and other’s experience in the Queer space has me giddy with glee.”
