The exhibition by Vojislav Radovanović is on view at the West Hollywood Library. (photo courtesy of the city of West Hollywood)

The city of West Hollywood presents “Bird Circuit 90069,” a new exhibition on view through late January 2027 at the West Hollywood Library featuring original artworks on canvas and paper by Los Angeles-based artist Vojislav Radovanović.

The exhibition interweaves myth, queer histories and personal narrative. Building on Radovanović’s earlier project “Bird Circuit,” the iteration locates itself within the heart of West Hollywood, a city with a social history inseparable from LGBTQ+ life, resilience and community.

The exhibition title references the covert, coded naming convention of LGBTQ+ bars of the past. Before bars were able to advertise themselves publicly as LGBTQ+ venues, they used code names to covertly signal themselves as places of queer refuge and connection during times of intense social and legal oppression. Often the first word of a bar’s name was a color, and the second word was a bird. This was known as the bird circuit.

In the middle of the 20th century, a person could visit most any urban area in the country and find a Blue Parrot, Black Swan or White Swallow. It is unknown exactly where the construction of such terms originated; it may have been derived from a cluster of bars located along Third Avenue in New York City in the early 1950s. The bars had such names as the Blue Parrot (on East 53rd Street) and the Golden Pheasant (on East 48th Street). Police raids eliminated the bars by the late 1960s.

The earliest known reference to Bird Circuit in print was in Tennessee Williams’ 1953 play “Camino Real,” which is set in a fictional tropical town at the end of the Camino Real, a town “outside of time in a place of no specific locality.” The first known LGBTQ+ establishment with a name following the color-bird naming pattern was the White Swan on Vere Street, in London, England, which was raided on July 8, 1810. Twenty-seven men were arrested, eight were tried and convicted and two were hanged as part of the Vere Street Coterie.

The West Hollywood Library is located at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. A reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 16, from 7-9 p.m. RSVPs are requested via Eventbrite at eventbrite.com/e/exhibit-reception-bird-circuit-90069-tickets-1997894891402. For information, visit weho.org/arts.