Oliver McFeely and Samuel Rodrigues, based in Dublin and internationally, are the creators and founders of Artistic Patterns. They have recently launched the #RainbowChallenge Project as a way to show a visual representation of LGBT+ individuals (what they call the ‘rainbow community’) about the struggle with ‘coming out’ and how everyone wears some kind of mask in order to be socially acceptable. In the following post, Oliver and Samuel give us the details about their project and explain how you can get involved!
“This is our Rainbow story” through #rainbowchallenge, is a visually colorful project created to help show some of the challenges the Rainbow community (LGBTQ+ individuals) still faces today.
With so many challenges, we decided to highlight ‘coming out’, a topic very familiar to many of us as part of the Rainbow community, where our friends and family are wearing a diverse range of colorful masks.
The message we strive to convey is that a person should not have to ‘come out’, but instead, everyone should be accepted for who they are. We all wear some kind of social mask in order to be accepted in different stages of life with different people in order to protect ourselves. For a lot of LGBTQ+ people, or rephrasing to be more inclusive, ‘rainbow individuals’, we know that when we decide to ‘come out’, it can be a scary journey for some. Our message with this project is that no one really should have to ‘come out’.
We have noticed an increasing division within the LGBTQ+ community regarding race and the Transgender community as an example. The word ‘rainbow’ was used throughout this project to be inclusive of everyone, representing diversity within the LGBTQ+ community. Each colour was inspired from the Rainbow flag, with the addition of pink, representing part of LGBTQ+ history and its difficulties.
Historically the pink triangle was worn upside down as a badge of shame on Nazi camp prisoners. Revived in the 1970`s as a symbols of protest against homophobia, pink became historically a queer symbol and colour. Colours can be a powerful physiological tool for emotions and feelings.
While black and white is not part of the Rainbow flag, many participants wanted to dress in these colours, so we decided to hear them and add it on our video color pallet. With black conveying the message of infinity from the universe and white for peace, used as a symbol for peaceful movements.
Our goal for this colorful project is to help and inspire other Rainbow individuals with their ‘coming out’ journey and many other challenges we all might face. We hope this project will continue to inspire others and challenge you to come out and dress your best colour of the rainbow and show pride on being who you are in local pride parade. Let’s share together on social media #rainbowchallenge.
With this project we would like to invite you to take our quiz, which will help us with our next project and will be addressed through visual content: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges the rainbow community faces nowadays?
Please find full quiz here: https://www.apinspiring.com/rainbow
To view full video project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT5AaG0yQ2o&t=4s