We're always here
Installation, the use of space
Statement:
Thinking about Power and Violence. I have been challenged to look back to my own experiences and priviliges regarding this topic. Born as a white cis-male in quite a wealthy family has been a fortune. But being queer in seksuality and gender-expression has also learned me the meaning of exclusion at a young age.
My work is almost all the time very queer at heart. I sometimes find that quite annoying actually and wonder if there’s not more to it. But being in my twenties and this new formative phase leads me to express these kinds of topics right now. I have known oppression in a world that’s heteronormative, patriarchal and kapitalistic. And especially after graduation I started realize it’s this fight against the status-quo, a battle a lot of us are in, that is at the center of my practice. And it’s this constant questioning of society standards that is the true definition of queer. In this light I even try to evaluate the way art and film industry are constructed and how much it benefits different visions.
My work always has tried to introduce queer character without using their identity or sexuality as the main-conflict. In that sense I try to make work that is ‘post-conflict’ and focuses on topics that are quite universal and recognizable for everybody. But as a queer artist I feel like I need to address that the world we live in is not perfect. Violence and oppression is still present. Not only in countries where we are not tolerated, but also in the west. We come from far and we've encountered a lot, but we're still a target of hate. Take the recent shooting in a US gay bar for example.
I had to learn oppression from the past and queer history through art, because they don't teach you those things at school. For example, if it weren’t for the pictures of Nan Goldin, movies like 120 BPM or Paris is Burning I wouldn’t have known much about the aids crisis, activism or ballroom-culture.
For me it was funny to lately notice how popular gay-culture items can also reflect our past in a different way. In the romantic comedy Bro’s the storyline about two men finding love is a bit corny, but the sweet part of the movie was the job of the lead character as the director of an upcoming LGBTQ+ museum. He is very passionate about queer history and also quite activistic about it. This way the movie hints at the past that made it possible for these two men to be a little bit more free nowadays.
Another lucrative way of reflecting historic events was the look of dragqueen Chedar Gorgeous in Dragrace UK, refering to the Act-Up movement. These two ways of expressing the past gave me the insight that acknowledging oppression and violence can have different possibilities and outcomes in the art we create.
How do we remember when we also want to move forward? How do we not forget, but also tell new stories? How can we be innovative in challenging the future while not forgetting the past? How to express a history that you haven't witnessed, but makes a better life possible?