Coming Out Museum Encounters

Coming out is a cons­tant, never-ending pro­cess of dis­co­ve­ring one’s own non-hete­ro­sexu­al and non-cisgen­der iden­tity. It begins with the first moments of awa­re­ness of one’s own iden­tity which dif­fers from the domi­nant one, and con­ti­nu­es with nume­ro­us steps of accep­tan­ce. There are many impor­tant moments along the way, miles­to­nes in under­stan­ding one’s own iden­tity, its accep­tan­ce, moments of accep­tan­ce from the envi­ron­ment, and final­ly living non-hete­ro­sexu­al and non-cisgen­der iden­ti­ti­es ope­nly and completely.

Coming Out Museum (COME) col­lec­ts and pre­sents sto­ri­es abo­ut the­se tur­ning points, as well as objec­ts and wor­ks of art that sym­bo­li­ze the­se coming out sto­ri­es and act as memory trig­gers. Through them, we try to point out the pro­cess of awa­re­ness and accep­tan­ce of per­so­nal iden­tity, which is dif­fe­rent from the one we usu­al­ly build accor­ding to the domi­nant cul­tu­ral and soci­al pat­tern. The goal of the pro­ject is to emp­ha­si­ze the link with expe­ri­en­ces rela­ted to the wider LGBTIQ+ com­mu­nity by hig­hlig­h­ting per­so­nal sto­ri­es, from indi­vi­du­al to uni­ver­sal. Each sha­red story is also an invi­ta­ti­on to add new ones.