What do queer Appalachians and a serpent-handling preacher have in common? More than you might think.
“American culture really wants to deposit us at total opposite ends of the spectrum,” artist Aaron McIntosh says. “But actually, we both are in the same milieu in American culture, of existing at the fringes, whether wanted or not.”
McIntosh’s installation, “Invasive Queer Kudzu,” is at the heart of a new exhibit exploring the intersection of place and identity at the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University. Along with religious folk art by the late Reverend Jimmy Morrow, the exhibit invites visitors to consider how two identities at opposing poles of American culture and politics both find meaning in rootedness to their shared home.
The juxtaposition of these works – one celebrating LGBT Appalachian identity, the others grounded firmly in both Appalachian folk tales and conservative Christian theology – is a striking reminder that these mountains have always contained multitudes. The dialogue between the pieces, however, reveals just how much these seemingly oppositional perspectives and experiences have in common, speaking not only to Appalachia but to this divisive and pivotal moment in American history.Comparing the struggles of queer Appalachians to those of serpent-handling charismatic Christians may seem peculiar at first. “It’s easily one of the oddest invitations to be part of a group exhibition that I’ve received,” McIntosh admits.
On reflection, however, the dialogue between the works – McIntosh’s unruly quilted kudzu vines with their individual leaves painted with messages by actual queer Appalachians at the center, surrounded by works of jarring folk paintings by Morrow, each depicting either folklore of East Tennessee, Biblical motifs, or both, speaks to a shared experience of otherness in a mutually cherished home and culture. The exhibition provides visitors with “this really unique entry into thinking about how communities are built and forged around different connections to the land,” McIntosh says.
In doing so, the exhibit demonstrates how two seemingly opposite and irreconcilable worldviews not only share the same Appalachian home but have similar experiences that shape the foundation of their identities. Whereas Reverend Morrow’s work frequently references the history and traditions of his own beloved Cocke County, kudzu itself is an inextricable – if invasive – part of the Appalachian landscape.
Leaves from Aaron McIntosh’s ‘Queer Invasive Kudzu’ installation. (Photo by Skylar Baker-Jordan)
“It’s a really apt metaphor for how queer communities, queer individuals, navigate an inhospitable environment in the political climate of the Southern U.S.,” McIntosh says.
Kudzu is technically an invasive plant. Originally from Asia, it was imported into the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries both as a decorative plant and as a way of controlling soil erosion on hillsides along the nation’s burgeoning network of highways. However, it quickly became a nuisance, loathed by generations as “the vine that ate the south.”“I think that queer people, like kudzu, thrive in these inhospitable environments,” McIntosh explains. “We grow where we’re unwanted.”
The same can be said for Reverend Morrow and his fellow believers. Despite coming from an orthodox theological tradition not dissimilar from other Appalachian denominations, serpent-handling churches have long found their religious practices ostracized and even criminalized across the region. Whereas homosexuality was illegal in Tennessee under the state’s sodomy laws until 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down such laws in Lawrence v. Texas, serpent handling remains illegal in the Volunteer State, though a 2014 case out of LaFollette saw the law essentially nullified by a jury.
Beyond the legal oppression of these expressions of identity, though, are the deeply personal convictions represented in each artwork. This is where the brilliance of the exhibit shines, and where it really captures the zeitgeist in a way that challenges our notions of belonging amidst vast political and cultural differences.
Here in one space, we have two divergent worldviews coexisting, just as they must in the real world. In studying Invasive Queer Kudzu in relation to the paintings of Rev. Morrow, we see similar themes emerge: Home, rootedness, marginalization, and the deeply personal ways in which we experience these things and in which they form the basis of our core identity. Rev. Morrow took up serpents to practice his religion in the same way I go to the local gay club to experience community and nourish my own soul.
These things are not contradictions. They are different expressions of the same primal need for connection, meaning, and understanding our place in this world and – at least for Rev. Morrow – the next.Together, these works speak to the need for conversation and dialogue in this moment in our nation’s history. We do not talk to one another. We seem to believe that Appalachia – that America – is a zero-sum game, that either they win or we win.
“Go Ye To The World,” a painting by the Reverend Jimmy Morrow. (Photo by Skylar Baker-Jordan)
Yet looking at the work of Mr. McIntosh and Rev. Morrow (who, it is safe to assume, believed homosexuality is sinful) shows us that at our core, we’re looking for and living through the same things. Serpent handling and LGBT identities are both stigmatized and ridiculed, ostracized and othered. Yet both are intrinsic to the identities of people who may not agree with one another but who still find meaning in these mountains.“The Place Speaks” proves that not only can divergent worldviews live together in Appalachia and in rural America, but that we’re already doing it. We have never been one singular thing, either all queer or all Christian. Appalachia, like the rest of rural America, is and always has been big enough for both. This is my home, but it is also Rev. Morrow’s. By forcing two competing worldviews into dialogue with one another, the exhibit shows us how to navigate our current political and cultural divisions to find the things that unite rather than divide us.
“I feel like American culture really wants to deposit us at total opposite ends of the spectrum,” McIntosh says. “You have a left meaning or whatever community art project that’s celebrating queerness and queer communities, and you have someone who is grounded in a very old religious tradition.”
However, by considering the works of Rev. Morrow alongside “Invasive Queer Kudzu,” we see that these two seemingly contradictory worldviews have more in common than we may have thought. Both the messages on the kudzu leaves and Morrow’s primitive folk art speak to a need for belonging, for placing oneself in the context of not only place but of time, of the people who came before, and of a love of a place that does not always love you back. It is about seeking belonging and equality and, hopefully, a mutual understanding so that we may live the truth of e pluribus unum: Out of many, one.
“The Place Speaks” is open through December 12, 2025, at the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. Admission is free and open to the public.
The post Commentary: An Exhibit of Queer and Evangelical Appalachian Art Speaks to Our Political Moment appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
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