Avian Mysteries and Queer Coded Histories in Flight

Essay by Jason Jenn

bird circuit (n.): a network of historic bar venues with bird-inspired names like The Swan, The Golden Pheasant, The Yellow Cockatoo, and The Blue Parrot, which offered covert queer communal spaces at a time it was considered illegal.

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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 multichannel 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 Stonewall Uprising, The Anti-Communist Red Scare of McCarthyism invigorated a moral panic about queer individuals, in a term now referred to as the Lavender Scare¹. 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 10450². This homophobic measure led to a massive suppression 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, discrimination 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 predominantly 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. 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 culture. Through the past eight years of experiencing the diverse community on display in Southern California, Radovanović’s personal and creative styles have evolved. 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, his use of color, incorporation of multimedia, and exploration of subject matter. 

 

As curator of Bird Circuit, my connection to the artist is unapologetically personal. Vojislav and I have influenced and curated each other through 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 L.A. 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 was given the opportunity to present a solo show at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery, coinciding with Pride month by its director, Dr. Mika Cho, he began with my assistance to imagine and incorporate the Bird Circuit’s symbolic potential in relation to his body of 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 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 called 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 most certainly intended–featuring the tagline “an intimate place to drink”. The rise of The Eagle bars in the 1970s became synonymous with gay leather subculture. Over 50 independently operated bar venues existed worldwide at its height, all stemming from the original 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 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 runs deep. Scientists have discovered that human hearing is more attuned to the frequency range of bird song than human speech.⁷ This is likely not a mere coincidence, but probably 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 could also likely 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 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, drawing inspiration from the tradition of signalling identity through imaginative codes. 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, which examined the fallibility of human understanding through our attempts to interpret nature, specifically through the ancient practice of reading bird signs as omens. That show, like many of the works in Bird Circuit, included anthropomorphic figures and motifs inspired by religious iconography. 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 a 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 comes 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. For him, it was therapeutic and transformative to destroy older work that failed to meet his exacting requirements and to give them renewed purpose in this manner. 

 

Richly developed background textures are the important backbone of his work.  He enjoys carving into the 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 old paintings and multiple smaller canvases stitched together into new, larger ones. The patchwork of canvases creates Frankensteinesque 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, but he often applies 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 living room in South Bay to our larger space in the Antelope Valley that accompanied his yearlong residency with Lancaster’s Museum of Art and History as part of the Artists At Work national workforce resilience program in 2022. This allowed him to expand his work in both size and variety, capable of working on multiple pieces at the same time. The process of creating three large public art murals for the city encouraged him to expand the size of his work on canvas as well.

 

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 works, 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. 

 

The entire exhibition can be interpreted as a Tarot reading, with each work acting symbolically as a card laid out in a spread on the wall, telling a fortune while setting the scene. Tarot also offers a useful framework for some of the archetypal imagery in his work. Additionally, one can sense traces of iconography from the Serbian medieval fresco painting and classical works of art. Radovanovic even finds inspiration from the mass-produced ceramic bird figurines commonly displayed in middle-class homes as ways to bring nature into the domestic realm, like those from his own childhood memory. 

 

All of those influences are most visible in the work The Truth Cannot Hide Its Horn (The Red Parrot), 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, hairless, pink-fleshed bodied monkey-like figure with a humanoid face and large red moustache crawls while holding 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 that evokes all manner of 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, with many gaps in the development and the figure going through many gender changes and looks, from a self-portrait to that of his mother, before the artist finally settled upon the present 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 that accompanies the aforementioned painting. The projection falls upon the folds of the white curtain, distorting the moving images like rippling water to portray a vibrant, dreamlike scene of a genderfluid performer (Drew Arvizu aka GIRL ACNE) 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 Ladders and the embroidered cape and collage Let Love Flourish (Cape) are testaments to his work as an art director for both stage and 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, so that 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 evoke the feeling of entering a bar’s back room.

 

Some works use highly stylized and limited color palettes influenced by Radovanović’s research into how birds see the outside world with tetra-chromatic vision, allowing them to perceive four primary colors (versus humans who have three), 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 and things happening with them, alluding to the male gaze and how important eye signals are in gay culture. 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 the 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, sticking out its tongue. 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 (The Black Swan), a large human face is shaped from a lake, flowers, and the canopy of trees, where once more a monkey crawls along the branches where the forehead would be, bringing forth the concept of the restless monkey mind. 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 14 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 The Sun and The Moon on opposing walls of gallery two are the brightly colored Sun Valley (The Flaming Tanager) and In the Moonlight (The Bluebird). In each large-scale painting, a single massive bird is depicted in the foreground using inverse perspective, while two small couples are present in the background in blissful romantic scenes. 

 

Love permeates the exhibition as a transformative act born out of the pain of queer history. In the first gallery, the side-by-side pairings of Ultraviolet (The Blue Finches) and The Little Love Affair contain flirtatious birds checking each other out while perched upon the branches of wildly stylized trees. In Birdsong for Bather, a naked swimmer, inspired by the large red bird singing nearby, whistles while the shadow of his hand turns into a bird giving his nipple a playful peck. In The Bearded Nest, three hummingbirds buzz around a bearded male emerging from the underbrush. In the Swans, the titular birds swim toward each other with their necks sweetly forming a heart. In a secret place for you and me, an impossible island with a tree of life and rivers streaming from within the palms of a pair of cupped hands creates a home for a flock of peacocks. These serene and colorful works are Radovanović’s way of reclaiming his own story just as others seek to suppress and oppress–his way of combating hate with love and affection.

 

By reinterpreting the legacy of the Bird Circuit, the exhibition does more than pay homage to a hidden past, it gestures toward the possibilities of a more open, imaginative future–even amid the bleakness of our present moment. 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 new mythologies.

 

The exploration of these themes feels especially urgent today, as LGBTQ+ communities once again face increasing attempts to suppress, 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 struggles and resilience. Radovanovic’s work offers 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. During turbulent times, 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.

 

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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.