SEATTLE — There is a rich history and culture surrounding queer art. Still, so often it’s censored and hidden online.
One local artist is trying to change that in the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
“This is another really fun artist that I picked up locally,” said Tyler Huang, showing KIRO 7 around his store Queertique.
Queertique is a mecca for independent queer art. It’s stocked with original art, swimwear and clothing, greeting cards, alcoholic drink mixers, queer literature and more. Most products for sale are created by independent, queer artists.
“Being able to support people in the queer community, while also helping people, is really what I wanted to do,” Huang said.
It was an unexpected career shift for Huang, who started his career as a Chinese translator for state government.
“I realized that it was more of the helping people, not so much the work I was doing that I enjoyed,” he said.
In 2021, he took a leap and opened his store in Palm Springs. He moved it back to Washington, where he’s from, in 2023.
The goal was to highlight queer artists whose work he saw disproportionately censored online.
“A lot of the themes that are often seen in queer art can be somewhat sexual, so it’s really hard to navigate posting things online,” he said. “Opportunities showcase artwork can be limited.”
It can be disheartening, Huang said, to put so much work creating something that then becomes almost impossible to showcase to others for them to enjoy.
“We have to have a real world space where we can put this art on display,” he said.
Queertique became his solution. An artist himself, he uses his downtime in the shop to work on his sewing.
“Just hunting down vintage kimono fabrics and kind of up cycling garments,” he said, showing us his work, which featured those fabrics sewn on to jackets and other garments.
He calls it a representation of his own queer identity.
“I’m Chinese, but also queer,” he said. “I think it’s really important for communities to lend solidarity to each other, and this is kind of what symbolizes that for me.”
It wasn’t necessarily the first path he saw for himself, but now Huang’s future is clear as ever.
“I hope that I will be here for awhile,” Huang said. “Everyone has to do what they can, whether it’s engaging and actively protesting something or even just something small. It all counts…. This is my contribution to helping support freedom of expression, self expression.”
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