City of West Hollywood Presents New Exhibition at West Hollywood Library: ‘Bird Circuit 90069’

The City of West Hollywood is pleased to present Bird Circuit 90069, a new exhibition at West Hollywood Library featuring original artworks on canvas and paper by Los Angeles-based artist Vojislav Radovanović, which interweaves myth, queer histories, and personal narrative. Building on Radovanović's earlier project Bird Circuit, this 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, one 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 3rd 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 these 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, a molly house, which was raided on July 8, 1810. Twenty-seven men were arrested, eight were tried and convicted, and two men were hung as part of the Vere Street Coterie.

Several works in the Bird Circuit 90069 exhibition pay homage to historic LGBTQ+ bars and clubs in West Hollywood and Los Angeles, such as the Red Raven, Blue Parrot, Club Flamingo, and Flamingos; 90069 refers to the local ZIP code in West Hollywood. Through painting and drawing, Radovanović conjures a poetic aviary where birds become metaphors for freedom and coded identity. Radovanović transforms these hidden sanctuaries into surreal images, often combining male portraiture with dreamlike landscapes and feathered figures that shimmer with history and desire. Bird Circuit 90069 celebrates queer resilience, acknowledging a lineage of coded survival while reimagining it as a vibrant, contemporary myth.

Born in 1982 in Yugoslavia, Vojislav Radovanović is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist whose practice explores the immigrant experience, LGBTQ+ identity, collective memory, and the natural world. Coming of age during a period of political unrest and war, his work frequently employs motifs of birds and wild plants as symbols of resilience, adaptation, and borderless migration. Radovanović, who earned his BA from the University of Fine Arts in Belgrade, has exhibited at venues such as Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Torrance Art Museum, and internationally at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris and Mall Galleries in London.

The exhibition will remain on view at West Hollywood Library, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard, during regular library hours until late January 2027. The exhibition is free to visit. A reception will take place on Friday, October 16, 2026 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. RSVPs are requested via Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exhibit-reception-bird-circuit-90069-tickets-1997894891402.

The City of West Hollywood's Arts Division delivers a broad array of arts programs including Art on the Outside (temporary public art), City Poet Laureate, Drag Laureate, Free Theatre in the Parks, Arts Grants, Library Exhibits, National Poetry Month, Summer Sounds + Winter Sounds, Urban Art (permanent public art), the WeHo Pride Arts Festival, and WeHo Reads. For more information about City of West Hollywood arts programming, please visit www.weho.org/arts.

For additional information about temporary library exhibitions, please visit https://www.weho.org/community/arts-and-culture/visual-arts/library-exhibitions.

For more information, please contact Mike Che, the City of West Hollywood's Arts Coordinator, at (323) 848-6377 or at [email protected]. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing dial 711 or 1-800-735-2929 (TTY) or 1-800-735-2922 (voice) for California Relay Service (CRS) assistance.

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For reporters and members of the media seeking additional information about the City of West Hollywood, please contact the City of West Hollywood's Public Information Officer, Sheri A. Lunn, at (323) 848-6391 or [email protected].