Distributaries

(Dis)placing Us on the Map: An Interactive Exhibition and Reflection

April 28, 2026

Collage featuring Natalie Willens by Madeleine Barnes.

We are honored to present CUNY Adjunct Incubator work. Please read about Natalie Willens’ (LaGuardia Community College) public scholarship and its impact below.

In Fall 2023, supported by the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium and LaGuardia & Wagner Archives, I began forming a collective of LaGuardia students and faculty to build a map and archive of underrepresented/underfunded LGBTQIA+ spaces in New York City.

What are the spaces where we as LGBTQIA+ people feel inspired and supported to thrive in the world? Our collective of students and faculty met each week on the LaGuardia campus and around the city to work towards building our archive. Side-by-side, we made playlists, drew maps, shared stories, ate snacks, and talked about our favorite spaces in New York City. Gradually over the course of a year, we began to both define and create spaces where we, as LGBTQIA+ students and faculty, feel seen, safe(r), and free(r) to be our full selves.

*Photograph by Eli Baretto, taken after our collective shared our work at the LGBTQIA+ fellowships showcase at LaGuardia Community College*.

As a 2025 CUNY Adjunct Incubator awardee, I worked with our collective to produce a public exhibition of our photographs and oral histories at LaMama’s Community Arts Space. The exhibition had three main goals: To highlight the powerful collaborative work of CUNY students/faculty and community organizers, to respond to the ever-increasing erasure of LGBTQIA+ spaces that serve the most marginalized members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and to secure more sustainable funding for the organizations that cultivate these life-saving spaces.

Highlighting work from our archive, we honored four organizations/spaces that have sustained queer and trans life across generations: Queer | Art, National Queer Theater, Queens Community House’s Center for Gay Seniors, and Callen-Lorde.

*Photograph by Bri Davis: A participant viewing the photographs and oral history excerpts highlighting Callen-Lorde’s healthcare work*.

Photograph by Bri Davis: A photograph and oral history excerpt highlighting
Queer | Art’s mentorship work.

Members of each organization spoke about the care work and collective labor that shaped and protected these sites—often in the face of displacement, underfunding, and political hostility. Their stories illuminated how LGBTQIA+ spaces are not only physical locations, but living networks of resistance, creativity, and belonging.

*Photograph by Matt Brim: A collective map inviting participants to add to the archive by pinning their own stories of queer/trans joy, affirmation, and resistance.*

We invited viewers to move beyond observation into participation; A large, collective map of the city served as a gathering point where visitors pinned spaces that have been meaningful to them—past or present—expanding the archive in real time.

*Photograph by Matt Brim: A participant writes a memory in front of the introductory display at the exhibition*.

*Photograph by Bri Davis: A close-up of a pin highlighting Undocuqueer’s work*.

Through written reflections and recorded responses, attendees also shared their visions for future liberatory LGBTQIA+ spaces in NYC: What do we need now? How could funding and space allocation build new possibilities for LGBTQIA+ care, mutual aid, mentorship, and artistry in our city? How do landback and reparations fit into these visions?

Photograph by Bri Davis: A closeup of the “recording” table, asking participants to consider the role of reparations, landback, and accountability when dreaming of liberatory queer/trans futures in NYC.

These stories help elucidate why each of these spaces is so important for our communities, and ultimately “worth fighting for” in a rapidly gentrifying New York City. By weaving together student research, community memory, and public imagination, the exhibition positioned the archive not as a static record, but as an active, intergenerational dialogue that has the potential to spark new policy decisions that protect, nurture, and dream about liberatory LGBTQIA+ spaces in our city.

Check out a link to the event on our website here.

For more information about the affiliated spaces with this project, take a look at their websites:

Queer | Art

National Queer Theater

Queens Community House’s Center for Gay Seniors

Callen-Lorde

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

This event was co-sponsored by CLAGS, the Center for LGBTQ+ Studies, and the CUNY Adjunct Incubator award from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center. Also made possible by generous funding from the New York City Council to the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium, and supported by the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives.

Natalie Willens

Natalie Willens is an educator, artist, organizer, and Ph.D. candidate in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. They have published poetry, essays, and photography on the intersections of art and activism, and are working on a multi-year project with LaGuardia Community College students to creatively archive underfunded LGBTQ+ spaces in New York City.