Art exhibit marks full circle moment for LGBTQ+ activist

Arleen Olshan, a Mt. Airy–based artist and activist, opens her latest exhibition “Arleen Olshan: The Tangle I’ve Gotten Into” on Jan. 16 at iMPeRFeCT Gallery in Germantown, running through Feb. 21. The show combines two series: “Dead Dykes & Some Gay Men,” a memorial portrait series honoring LGBTQ+ activists and loved she has lost—including a long-delayed painting of her friend Gil Forman and his partner Zach—and “Women Loving Women,” large-scale figurative works from the 1970s and 1980s celebrating lesbian feminist intimacy and liberation. The exhibition also includes an archival element of memorial cards and newspaper clippings Olshan saved over decades.