For the third consecutive year, Old Jaffa's Street Gallery is hosting the exhibition "Outside the Box" by ARTIQ – Israeli Queer Art, striving to give a platform to a discourse centered on LGBTQ+ art and culture and to allow the authentic voices of artists from the LGTBQ+ community to be heard.

The acronym LGTBQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer. The + represents the term's fluidity and its openness to embrace other identities. Accordingly, some of the works in the exhibition challenge what is perceived in our society as "normal" or "natural" in terms of sex, sexual and gender identity, and the social expectations derived from these perceptions. Questions such as: Who desires and who is desired?, Who is strong and who is weak?, Who is dominant and who is submissive? are raised, both directly and indirectly. The tension between the desire to belong and the fear of assimilation into the oppressive systems themselves is also discernible in some of the works.

Another cluster of works reflects experiences unique to LGTBQ+ life, such as the perception of the urban or virtual space and its division into safe and accommodating vs dangerous and undermining or representation of internal conflicts experienced in a world in which people are still considered "heterosexual until otherwise proven."

In some of the works, one may also identify "queer" qualities in the material or aesthetic sense: unexpected combinations of techniques, artistic languages, and materials. This eclectic blend of themes, experiences, and techniques, in an exhibition that features more than 50 artists from diverse backgrounds and age groups, illustrates the complexity of the discourse, which strives to create and present a community without blurring individual identities and particular exclusions.

The Old Jaffa Development Company aims to preserve Old Jaffa as a cultural and artistic center. The outdoor gallery offers an accessible, natural meeting point between audience and art. We are pleased to provide a platform to artists from the LGTBQ+ community.