QUEER CARIBBEAN HOMECOMINGS

Abstract

This essay explores the joint multimedia exhibits presented in the Dominican Republic by the artistic collaborators Nelson Ricart-Guerrero, a Dominican now living in Paris, and his French partner, Christian Vauzelle, and the questions that Ricart-Guerrero's artistic return raises about what queer migrants might bring back home. I suggest that these repeated artistic homecomings trouble prevalent perceptions of migration as a movement from repression to freedom for queer migrants, perceptions that render such a return to the supposedly more “repressive” Dominican Republic undesirable. I furthermore discuss how this artistic homecoming problematizes the critical tendency to describe queer Caribbean subjects as “unhomely”—inherently at odds with and in a permanent literal or imaginary exile from the nation.