Avian Mysteries and Queer Coded Histories in Flight

Essay by Jason Jenn

bird circuit (n.): an informal network of historic queer-friendly bars and clubs with bird-inspired names, offering covert community and connection during a time it was illegal.

Inspired by a lifelong fascination with bird imagery, Vojislav Radovanović’s solo exhibition Bird Circuit explores themes of identity, coded meaning, and myth-making through contemporary painting, sculpture, installation, and multi-channel video art. Drawing from personal experience, historical concepts, and spiritual iconography, Radovanović situates his subjects within the lineage of queer subculture, layering his work with mystery, quiet subversion, and kaleidoscopic exuberance. Avian figures in his paintings assume multiple roles as guides, guardians, messengers, and shape-shifting embodiments of queer resilience. These aspects are expressed covertly – a furtive glance, a coy tilt of the head, a subtle hand gesture – to reveal hidden meaning beneath playful visuals and dazzling colors. Like the secretive signals that have long defined queer communication, Radovanović’s work invites viewers into multifaceted narratives, open to interpretation and rich with allusion. The exhibition is a transformative and celebratory presentation of art that emerges from a deeper, darker history.

In the decades leading up to the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, The Anti-Communist Red Scare of McCarthyism also invigorated a moral panic about queer individuals, in a term now referred to as the Lavender Scare.(1)  Deemed “misfits”, “undesirables”, “morally bankrupt”, “sexual perverts”,  and considered security risks susceptible to blackmail by foreign agents, homosexuals were barred from holding federal positions in Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450.(2)  This led to a massive homophobic oppression of LGBTQ individuals nationwide and forced millions of government employees to sign oaths of moral purity. There was never a true repeal of the order until Obama’s final day in office in 2017 with Executive Order 13764, which finally expanded non-discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. However, this issue is once again rearing its ugly head in this contentious contemporary moment with the Trump administration’s brazen erasure of DEI initiatives, and in particular queer and trans rights.

Homophobia has existed throughout known history, forcing individuals to hide in the shadows and repress their true selves from a heterosexual culture that feels inordinately threatened by the expression of same sex love and gender diversity. This exhibition serves as a kind of artistic coming out, with a show that purposely infuses it with themes that voice a topic of personal interest to Radovanović. Sadly, as with most countries around the world, the artist’s home country of Yugoslavia, now Serbia, has a long history entrenched in the suppression and oppression of LGBTQ freedoms. Through the past eight years of experiencing the diverse community on display in Southern California, Radovanović’s personal and creative styles have evolved and emboldened. His work has been influenced by the many multidisciplinary forms and freedoms witnessed in the vibrant Los Angeles art scene. Combined with the vast array of LGBTQ cultural and social events readily available both online and in person, Radovanović has expanded and experimented with the ways he constructs his work, uses color, incorporates multimedia, and investigates subject matter.  

As curator of Bird Circuit, my connection to the artist is unapologetically personal. Vojislav and I have influenced and curated each other throughout our relationship as life partners since we met shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles. Within weeks of our first collaborative project, we recognized a lifelong potential for a shared aesthetic vision approachable from our different backgrounds and unique perspectives. We co-founded LA Art Documents as a way to further our connection and conversations about our varied and common interests, which have informed our approach to art. Living in a more freely expressive California, for me since 1998 from rural Iowa, and for Radovanović since 2017 from metropolitan Serbia, has given both of us a great appreciation for and connection to queer identity and culture in Los Angeles that our previous experiences simply could not offer. It was while collaborating on our 2021 film project, The Stuart Timmons City of West Hollywood LGBTQ History Tour, that Radovanović first encountered the concept of the historical Bird Circuit, which was mentioned in the late historian Timmons’ script.(3) When Radovanović received the opportunity to present a solo show at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery by its director, Dr. Mika Cho, he began, with my assistance, to imagine and incorporate the Bird Circuit’s symbolic potential concerning his body of new work.

The exhibition takes its name from a loose network of gay bars particularly active in mid-20th-century America. Located in cities like New York and Los Angeles, venues with bird-themed names became havens for queer community. These establishments offered sanctuary as spaces where one might find kinship, but also brought calculated risk as police raids were common and could ruin lives if patrons were outed publicly. Throughout history, marginalized communities have relied on coded messages and clandestine meeting spaces to foster a sense of connection and safety, hidden away from the scrutinizing and condemning public eye. Using a bird motif was a clever form of camouflage, signalling flamboyance, freedom, and the possible thrill of finding one’s flock.

In 1950s New York City, the Bird Circuit consisted of four mid-city bars between 3rd and 6th Avenue named The Swan, The Golden Pheasant (The Faison d’Or), The Yellow Cockatoo, and The Blue Parrot.(4)  Each venue was just a short walk from the next, making it possible to visit them all in a single night, a practice that came to define the idea of a circuit. Over time, the term “bird circuit” became slang for any informal route between queer bar and party scenes within an area. The term “Circuit party” is now used to describe large-scale, multi-day LGBTQ dance events and parties across multiple locations.(5)

In Los Angeles, venues like The Red Raven, Flamingos, and their own local version of Blue Parrot (in the 1970s) carried on the fine feathered theme. San Francisco added to the lore with The White Swallow—double entendre intended–featuring the tagline “an intimate place to drink”. The rise of The Eagle bars in the 1970s became synonymous with gay leather subculture. At its height, over fifty independently operated Eagle venues existed worldwide, all originating from The Eagle Open Kitchen, a longshoreman’s tavern in operation from 1931-1970 in New York City.(6)

Of course, not all queer venues used avian names, but birds, with their extravagant plumage, melodious singing, and elaborate courtship rituals offered a particularly poetic mirror to queer expression. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together, and queer community has always found creative ways to do so.

Furthermore, the relationship between birds and humanity is an ancient one. Scientists have discovered that human hearing is more attuned within the frequency range of bird song than human speech.(7)  This is likely not a mere coincidence, but an evolutionary adaptation: human ears are optimized to register these calls as environmental indicators of safety and abundance. If birds were present and singing, early humans could infer that predators were not, and that reliable food sources might also be found nearby. This primal association may explain why hearing bird calls and songs evoke feelings of peace, presence, and possibility in the listener. Bird Circuit is not only influenced by a historic metaphor, but a sensory one, reminding us that queerness, like birdsong, is aligned to both beauty and survival, ever aware of subtle shifts in the surrounding world.

Radovanović’s exhibition takes flight from this multilayered context. While not offering up literal depictions of historical venues, his works embody the conceptual ethos - transmuting personal memory, historic trauma, queer legacy, and fantastical symbolism into vividly joyful expressions.

Birds have long appeared through Radovanović’s work as metaphors for freedom, migration, and the transmission of hidden knowledge. Bird Circuit follows from his 2022 solo exhibition, Ornithomancy at the Diana Berger Gallery at Mt. San Antonio College, which examined the fallibility of human understanding through our attempts to interpret nature, specifically through the ancient practice of reading bird signs as omens. Two works from that exhibition (Omen and Migrations) have been included in this one to provide an active link. Bird Circuit also extends Radovanović’s investigations from Playground at the Abandoned Chapel, his 2023 solo exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery, which used bold color palettes and whimsical approaches to reimagine childhood memories and create new narratives to fill the semiotic vacancies left over from the fragmented, wartorn civilization.

Creation as a therapeutic ritual and mental health practice is essential in Radovanović’s process. The act of making has been a lifelong pursuit rooted in playful discovery and a method for escaping the ills and misfortunes of the outside world. It is less about avoidance and more about an artistic form of alchemy that transforms and transmutes painful experiences into imaginative possibilities. His works often begin with autobiographical fragments or symbolic prompts that undergo multiple cycles of redirection and revelation. Some designs are born from sketching. Others progress directly on the canvas through multiple and repeated applications of paint. Color and texture are essential, built up through layer upon layer of brushwork. 

But creation also emerges from the act of destruction. One of Radovanovic’s favorite approaches in his artmaking comes from recycling and repurposing older works to make new pieces. When we first met, Vojislav invited me to tear out one of his old drawings in the same way I was hand-tearing magazine prints to create my collages. He began utilizing this method, giving his unique twist to the process. It was therapeutic and transformative to give renewed purpose to older work that failed to meet his exacting requirements. 

A rich process and deeply developed background textures are important foundations of his work. He enjoys carving into those built layers of paint, scraping pieces off in expressive gestures. In some of the work, he even cuts directly into the canvas, exposing the framework behind it as if exposing the fabrication of reality or lifting the veil to another realm. There are buried stories beneath each piece that have informed the journey into its final form. Sometimes, traces of those previous incarnations are purposely left visible, enhancing their ethereal quality. 

Many of the works in this exhibition are composed of repurposed paintings and multiple smaller canvases stitched together into new, larger ones. His patchworks of canvas are Frankenstein-esque compositions, but rather than being monstrous, the results are mesmerizing. Sometimes gaps between surfaces are left visible; other times, they are filled in to maintain the flow of the image. He uses varied materials, like staples, wood scraps, upcycled fabric, and anything readily available, to bind the work together, keeping in line with the adaptable nature of the work.

The exhibition is a tribute to Radovanović’s creative versatility.  Painting remains at the forefront of his practice, but also branches into sculpture, wood carving, mixed media assemblage, embroidery on textile, installation, sketches, collage, and video art. There are several different kinds of acrylic on canvas applied using a variety of brushes and techniques, and he often adds colored pencil, graphite, ink, crackle medium, glitter, costume jewelry, and spray paint to develop the particular look and feel of each piece.  He’s been increasingly inventive over the years, especially with the recent expansion of his studio, from our small living room in South Bay to our larger space in the Antelope Valley necessitated by his yearlong residency with Lancaster’s Museum of Art and History as part of the Artists At Work national workforce resilience program in 2022. The process of creating two large public art murals for the city encouraged him to develop his work on canvas as well. The new studio allowed him to expand his work in both size and variety, allowing for work on multiple pieces simultaneously.

The interplay between spontaneity and meditated structure is central to Radovanović’s method. As a close observer of this process, I find his approach evocative of the Tarot.  Each painting begins in a “Fool” phase, named after the first card in the Tarot’s Major Arcana deck, an archetypal figure that embarks into the unknown, takes risks, and follows their bliss. During this initial phase of Radovanović’s creative process, concepts and ideas for artworks are loose and open, frequently adjusting direction as the layers and materials are built. Some works are set aside for months, revisited later with fresh insight. The images develop like an organic being growing based on a variety of conditions, current events, dreams, and conversations. This transformation is not metaphorical alone; its material reality in the studio, as entire compositions are reborn through intuitive shifts. I’ve personally watched works change dramatically overnight, their direction altered by a sudden insight or sensation, only to land in a final form that seemed destined all along.

When the moment arrives for focused and decisive creation, the work enters its “Magician” phase, the subsequent card of the Tarot. Experience, intention, and skill are required to shape the final form. Technical training makes its way into the paintings, adding depth and proficiency through a variety of learned techniques and subtle details. It’s in this liminal space between instinct and thoughtfulness that the work’s uncanny resonance takes hold. 

Tarot also offers a useful framework for some of the archetypal imagery in his work. Additionally, one can find traces of iconography from the Serbian Orthodox church tradition and classical works of art. Radovanovic even draws inspiration from ceramic bird figurines of his childhood; mass-produced objects collected by his mother that were commonly displayed in middle-class homes as a way to bring nature into the domestic realm.

All of those influences are visible in the work The Truth Cannot Hide Its Horn, which depicts an elegantly dressed female figure with a red parrot perched in her hand and a golden key dangling from its beak. The woman sits side saddle upon a fantastical horse with a curved red horn and a human face that stands upon a pedestal base floating in a lake of water lilies. Emerging from the woman’s head are the branches of a tree where a bizarre, pink-fleshed monkey-like figure with a humanoid face and large red moustache crawls. It holds a bright red commedia dell’arte mask with neon green flames that match the field of luminescent stars in the sky. The canvas is cut open in the upper right corner as if the horse’s horn had ripped into it, revealing an artist’s palette and ornate feather attached onto the canvas armature with a glowing neon green light behind it.

It is a striking image evoking mythical meaning and varied interpretations upon each viewing. It is rife with mystery, bringing to mind elements of the Tarot’s High Priestess and Queen of Cups. The title references the artist’s sexuality and how one’s truth cannot be hidden from the world. Radovanović worked on this painting for several years, setting it aside for long breaks in the development and many gender changes and looks in the figure. The blue blouse and pink dress on the white horse references the trans pride flag and the gender fluid nature of its wearer.

The mysterious and alluring power of gender fluidity, water, and self-reflection is present throughout the exhibition, particularly in the multichannel video projection Courtship Ritual that accompanies the aforementioned painting. The projection falls upon folds of a long white curtain, distorting the moving images like rippling water. It portrays a vibrant, dreamlike scene of a performer putting on drag makeup and getting into an extravagant feathery outfit while posing with a baby toucan in homage to classic camp art cinema like James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus. 

The other works in the room, the assemblage sculpture Birdwatchers and the embroidered cape and collage Let Love Flourish, are testaments to Radovanović’s work as an art director for both theatre stage and movie screen. Together as artist and curator, we’ve attempted to balance all of the works, thoughtfully placing them in conversation with each other within the gallery’s four rooms. Each space has a distinct tone and feeling, giving visitors a tour much like visiting the four different venues of the original New York Bird Circuit. We even included sparkling party curtains in the entrances to the final room to encourage the feel of entering a bar’s back room.

Some artworks use highly stylized color palettes influenced by Radovanović’s research into how birds perceive the outside world with tetrachromatic vision (versus humans who possess trichromatic vision), allowing them to perceive a wider range of color, including ultraviolet light.(8)  Birds also possess heightened perception and motion detection as defensive measures. Just as birds rely on sensory cues to navigate risk and attraction, queer individuals have long developed their own codes of recognition and response. 

Eyes–human and otherwise–recur as a visual motif many times, reinforcing the themes of desire and surveillance, blurring the boundaries between predator, prey, and protector, between observation, voyeurism, and objectification. This conceptual device is particularly prevalent in the works on the long wall of gallery three. Radovanović’s triptych Glancing Cruising Staring I, II, III was painted in bright red and blue hues with an emphasis on eyes, alluding to the homosexual male gaze and the importance of eye signals in queer culture and communication. The eyes can express volumes when words dare not be spoken.

The cutout canvas elements featured in The Magician (a direct reference to the Tarot) emphasize its eyes, and the two birds that are depicted facing either direction also create the illusion of a third face, staring directly back at the viewer as it sticks out a tongue from beneath a bushy moustache. The various hand gestures and little hats contribute to the playful nature of the piece and the multifarious meaning that viewers can construe.

In Waiting for the Kiss, a large human face is shaped from a lush lake setting. A black swan glides upon the water with its beak just beginning to touch the outer ledge of humanoid lips, hence its title. The figure’s eyes are kaleidoscopically fractured into fourteen versions, both human and bird-like in shape, reinforcing the exhibition’s metaphorical connection between species. This massive and hallucinatory portrait is hung floating above a mirrored floor lake, where Radovanović constructed a wood sculpture of two painted swans looking as if they’d just swum out of a Monet lily pond. 

Evoking the tarot cards of The Sun and The Moon on the opposing walls beside it, are the brightly colored Sun Valley and In the Moonlight. In each large-scale painting, a massive bird is depicted in the foreground using inverse perspective, while two small couples are present in the landscape background in blissful romantic scenes. 

Affection and flirtation permeate the exhibition as transformative acts born out of the pain of queer history. Placed side-by-side in the first gallery, Ultraviolet and The Little Love Affair contain pairs of birds coyly checking each other out while perched upon the branches of wildly stylized trees. In Birdsong for Bather, a naked swimmer whistles inspired by the large red bird singing nearby, while the shadow of his hand morphs into a bird giving his nipple a playful peck. In The Bearded Nest, three hummingbirds buzz joyously around a bearded male emerging from the shadowy underbrush. In Swans, the titular birds swim toward each other with their necks sweetly forming a heart. These serene, colorful works are Radovanović’s way of reclaiming his own story just as others seek to suppress and oppress. They are his way of combating hate with love.  

By reinterpreting the legacy of the Bird Circuit, the exhibition does more than pay homage to a hidden past; amid the uncertainty of our present moment, it gestures toward the possibilities of a more open, imaginative, and loving future. Radovanović’s birds are not just static subjects, they are emissaries calling for deeper conversation about the ways queer narratives are expressed, encoded, erased, and ultimately reclaimed through art. Some perch in domestic scenes. Others frolic into fantastical excess. Across them all, a gentle humor coexists with pathos, allowing memory to bloom into glorious new mythologies.

The exploration of these themes feels especially urgent today, as LGBTQ+ communities once again face increasing attempts to oppress, marginalize, and erase queer culture. The coded expressions and resilient spirit that once defined spaces like the Bird Circuit offer introspection and reflection on contemporary issues like drag bans, transphobic legislation, and the repeal of DEI initiatives. Generations raised in a time of progressive rights, trans visibility, and marriage equality must examine and reflect upon previous eras of struggle and resilience. Radovanović’s work is a reminder of the ongoing need for queer sanctuary, whether physical or symbolic, and the role art plays in spotlighting, expressing, and celebrating those spaces.

Bird Circuit is ultimately a declaration that queer culture persists, evolves, and refuses to be silenced. Love wins. During turbulent times, profound meaning can be found in a tremulous song, a rich brushstroke, or a flirtatious glance. Colorful birds, long used as metaphors for freedom and beauty, still have so much more to say. Long may they sing.

References

1 Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. University of Chicago Press, 2004.

2 National Park Service. “The Lavender Scare.” U.S. Department of the Interior, 29 June 2020.

3 WeHo Arts. Stuart Timmons West Hollywood LGBTQ History Tour: Part 11. YouTube video, Posted 30 June 2021. 

4 Hurewitz, Daniel. “Gay New York.” Perspectives on History. American Historical Association, 1 December 2008.

5 Weinstein, Steve. “The Unsung History of Circuit Parties, Where Gay Men Seek Sex and Freedom.” Vice Magazine. 21 June 2017.

6 Street, Mikelle. “How ‘The Eagle’ Became One of the Most Recognized Gay Bar Names.” NBC News. 24 October 2017.

7 University of Texas at Austin. “Birdsong and human voice built from same genetic blueprint.” Science News. Science Daily. 23 May 2024.

8 Withgott, Jay. “Taking a Bird's-Eye View…in the UV: Recent studies reveal a surprising new picture of how birds see the world.” BioScience, Volume 50, Issue 10, 01 October 2000.