At first, I went to LGBTQ dance nights because the music was better. Not having to deal with meat market dudes, who mostly lurked at South Side clubs waiting to pounce on drunk women, was a bonus.

As my Pittsburgh clubbing days progressed, I realized that maybe I wasn’t as straight as I thought. Maybe, I went to these parties at Cattivo, Brillobox, Hot Mass, and other places because I was, in fact, queer, and not just an appreciator of fine house music and mesh tops. I officially came out several years ago at — where else? — a dance party.

Brew House Arts explores this intersection of nightlife and queerness with a new exhibition demonstrating how underground clubs, strip joints, and discos allowed folks across the spectrum to live as their true selves, even if it was in the shadows. It also shows how they persist as safe spaces in a time when LGBTQ culture has become defiantly more visible and, as a result, politicized.

During a well-attended opening on Jan. 23, DJs, including contributing artists Mary “Mary Mack” Tremonte and Jules “Malzof” Malice, pumped music for a crowd eyeing the many works showcased in When the Lights Come On: Queer Nightlife as Emergent Space. Dancers from True T, a Black-led LGBTQ arts organization in Pittsburgh, paid tribute to ballroom culture by voguing, dipping, and duckwalking to the delight of onlookers.

Curated by Hannah Turpin — who organized other queer-centric shows at Brew House, including The Self, Realized: Queering the Art of Self-Portraiture in 2018 — When the Lights Come On features photography, sketches, painting, and other works depicting queer nightlife and dance culture in Pittsburgh and beyond. Above hang kaleidoscopic banners that sparkle with light from an unseen disco ball or laser light display, subtly adding a club-like vibe to the space.

Clint Fisher pays tribute to the city’s familiar haunts with three canvases dedicated to Lucky’s, a local bar, club, and gay strip joint where stockinged male dancers bump and grind for patrons. Fisher subverts the casually sexual nature of his subject with a style falling somewhere between the serene beauty of Édouard Manet and the exciting business of Romare Beardon — think “Music in the Tuileries” if there were swinging dicks and bare asses instead of ladies with parasols.

It’s no surprise that Harrison Apple, who co-founded the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, described as an “initiative focused on after-hours nightclubs and working-class LGBTQ lives in Pittsburgh” would appear here. They do their work justice with “Playback is Endurance”, a nostalgic installation mimicking a workbench built to preserve 1990s-era VHS tapes from ZTV Music On Sight, a Seattle-based subscription service for professional disc jockeys. An old TV loops the videos, and, complete with vertical lines and static, offer an analog look at some of the acts made popular by queer nightlife culture, including the now ultra-famous RuPaul and the Euro-disco duo Sparks.

It’s safe to assume that Apple’s charming multimedia work also winks at poppers, a popular gay club drug made from VCR head cleaner. The show addresses this aspect more explicitly with “RUSH”, a large papier-mâché sculpture of a popular popper brand in the scene since the 1970s.

Embroidery by French artist Théo Bignon and glossy prints by ggggrimes, a self-described “Black non-binary digital artist” from the Bronx, appear throughout the gallery, pulling viewers into different visions of queer nightlife. Bignon, with a combination of thread, sequins, and beads, captures the secretive stairwells, doors, and alcoves that transported revelers to their safe spaces, the shinier elements hinting at fun times ahead. Alternately, ggggrimes lays everything out in the open with works like “Hookup,” a graphic novel-esque portrait of queer sexual desire, the subject gazing directly at the viewer as someone out of frame cops a feel under their shirt.

In some respects, Bignon and ggggrimes occupy two perspectives: the necessary secrecy of queer past versus a new generation made more defiant by politicians and conservative groups that would see the LGBTQ community forced out of the mainstream and back into darkness.

Jimmy Wright stands out with Club 82, a series of sketches described as capturing the titular New York City club that, in the 1970s, served as a haven for drag queens, glam rockers, and queer people in general. Local photographer and DJ sarah huny young brings viewers back to the present day with vibrant images of Honcho, an annual camping weekend full of music, dancing, and diverse LGBTQ expression.

Rounding out the artists is Nica Ross, whose video work “Eyeball Palace” pays tribute to the essential act of seeing and being seen in clubs, and Amanda Pickler, whose painting lovingly highlights lesbian bar culture. A show like this wouldn’t be complete without a disco ball, supplied here by Malice and Janie Stamm, who also produced the fetish-focused “Harness Flag” that hangs proudly in the middle of the gallery.

But it’s “Queer Danceparty Promo,” a collage by Tremonte, that struck a chord. The various flyers contained here, all messily layered like they were stapled on a college campus message board, harken back to events I have either attended (the Sapphic Pamplemousse dance party) or covered (The Queer Ecology Hanky Project).

While I still feel like an outsider in the LGBTQ community, given my late-life coming out, Tremonte’s many playfully illustrated flyers remind me of my active participation, and that I may never have realized my identity if not for the queer events organized by her and others. It inspired gratitude for the work being done, and the work done by those before, all to create a community defined by acceptance, love, and club bangers.

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When the Lights Come On: Queer Nightlife as Emergent Space. Continues through March 22. Brew House Arts. 711 South 21st St., South Side. Free. brewhousearts.org