Queering the mus(e)ic: Women's artistic production and the possibilities of queer diasporic identity(s)

How is homoerotic or same-sex desire between women represented visually and aurally in public culture? How is queer female desire constructed through the arts when it is located within specific cultural contexts? Is it possible to 'read' queer female desire against compulsory heteronormative associations of sexual identity through the contributions of women artists locally and globally? If so, could these sites serve as links between queer female identity and a transnational Queer Diaspora?;In this paper I will be utilizing interdisciplinary approaches from feminism, musicology, postcolonial studies, visual studies, and cultural studies to address women artists and their ability to construct queer female identity against larger discourses of heteropatriachal notions of sexuality. This paper will begin by discussing the interplay between the arts, visual and performing, in exhibiting and generating lesbian desire, identity and agency, in hopes of forging alliances between various communities of women-loving-women and the struggles associated with such positions. Therefore, this project aspires to employ these spaces where queer female agency and queer female desire are exhibited in hopes to highlight our transnational connectivity as women-loving-women as well as the potential for creating coalitions and dialogue in the spaces where we become cut-off from one another as we negotiate our own geo-political and historical spaces and their implied heteronormativity.