Bird Circuit, a solo exhibition by artist Vojislav Radovanović, opens at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery at Cal State Los Angeles. Curated by Jason Jenn, the exhibition welcomes audiences into a kaleidoscopic world of painting, sculpture, installation, and video, where birds act as metaphors for personal expression and emissaries of the mysterious, in tribute to an enduring queer legacy.
The exhibition draws inspiration from a little-known piece of LGBTQ+ history: a loosely connected network of gay bars from the mid-20th Century in cities such as New York and Los Angeles. These venues dubbed the “Bird Circuit”, bore names like – The Swan, The Golden Pheasant, The Yellow Cockatoo, and The Blue Parrot, each offering covert spaces for queer connection at a time when open self-expression was criminalized. Avian names served as symbolic camouflage, signaling flamboyance, freedom, and the joy of flocking together.
Originally from Serbia (former Yugoslavia) and based in Los Angeles since 2017, Radovanović revisits this hidden history through personal and mythic visual interpretations. Bird Circuit reimagines childhood figurines and spiritual iconography through a queer lens. Compositions unfold from the layering of brushstrokes, cut canvases, and painterly collage techniques. The works are playful and poignant, brimming with glances, gestures, and subtle symbolism, evoking themes of visibility, longing, safety, and survival. His intuitive creative process becomes a therapeutic act of healing, transformation, and speculative myth-making.
Birds have been recurring motifs throughout Radovanović’s oeuvre, symbolizing migration, borderlessness, and the transmission of hidden knowledge. In Bird Circuit, they become not merely creatures to admire, but active agents: messengers, guides, and vessels for portraying queer stories and universal forces. It is Radovanović’s largest solo exhibition of new work to date, where visual themes unfold across four expansive gallery spaces and culminate in a mesmerizing multichannel video installation that brings the circuit full circle.
In today’s increasingly polarized political landscape, Bird Circuit arrives as a tribute, a refuge, and a call to action. As queer lives face renewed threats of suppression and cultural erasure, Radovanović’s work affirms the enduring need for sanctuary – both physical and symbolic – and the vital role of art as resistance, resilience, and revelation.
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Closed Saturday - Sunday, major holidays,
and during installation and de-installation of exhibitions.