Creatures are fascinating!
Right Before by John Osgood.
In a drive to survive, creatures have evolved with an array of rituals and practices, as well as many anatomies and living environments.
This evolution has relied upon natural urges – actions that are free from judgment and censorship.
The human survival path has veered from pure urges, and for many good reasons – society and community being some. Good and bad, right and wrong, are in many instances arbitrary, and we find ourselves living in a world that is heavy with inhibiting rules. We frown upon many things that other creatures don’t bother to consider, don’t deem as important or relevant to judge.
We need to learn to be both more and less discerning, because rejecting and punishing people for being who we naturally are is harmful, and it limits us unduly.
We need to be more questioning of what we believe when we look at other people. Why can’t we humans look at each other the way other creatures do, without the filters of judgment, with simple acceptance?
We are harming each other and ourselves.
We like to think that having moved away from our urges is evidence of evolving, of growing as a species. But more accurately, it is our ability to make a choice that is evolutionary – to choose whether or not to act upon our urges, to choose whether or not to judge ourselves and others for being our natural selves.
We must choose to question our beliefs and to then accept or reject what has become ‘normal’.
For so very long, art has been a means of exploring and challenging our paradigms. For fifteen years now, the Seattle Erotic Art Festival – through the vehicle of art – has brought very natural acts out from the shadows of condemnation and into the scope of possibilities many people may not have considered.
You may see on our walls and within our halls those things you may have dreamed of but never did, or that you did but then felt remorseful, or that you believed were true only for you, in isolation. And as you see that we not only accept so many natural urges but that we also celebrate them, you, too, can question the paradigms and begin deciding for your selves what is true and what is false.
Yours always, in the quest to be authentic,
Leila Anasazi, Exhibition Curator
Sophia Iannicelli, Executive Director
#makingSEAFgo