Fri 30 September 2022
Recyclart — Photothèque/Vitrine/Foyer/Resto — 18:00
In dialogue with the screenings and performances of the Festival, the H.H. exhibition invites visitors to celebrate the multiplicity of bodies, shapes, colours, ages, styles, through artistic gestures combining transformation, transmission, myth and politics.
A fine selection of 6 queer artists and collectives present their research on the representations of non-normative bodies. Through multiple levels of consciousness, the exhibition explores the infinity of universes within a body, from the outer envelope to the inner organs. A quest for the unifying differences inside each one of us, from living flesh to living plants.
In this exploration, the image is both the vessel of self-affirmation and the archive of a community, like myths offering shelter to old and new wounds. Each picture, drawing and painting exposes the act of transformation as a political means to fully reach and understand oneself, the other, ourselves – until the end.
Camille Nestor Josie
Liéchi on A2 et A3 — Belgium — 2021.2022
I’ve been drawing all my life but I’ve only been participating to exhibitions for a short time. I didn’t learn to draw, just as I didn’t have to learn to smile. It just took me. Growing up, drawing, music, dance or books, allowed me to me get through years of bullying at school. I created a whole universe inside of me to distract myself. I held on to my pencils until I was in my late teens about.
Then there was a gap. A gap that I can’t explain. The other arts took over my life. I did mostly slam, cabaret, singing, theater: arts that speak loudly and words that hit. I only drew rarely on the corners of notebooks, like whispering a shopping list.
Then in the spring of 2020, with the pandemic, everything stops. And me with it: burn out! My body stopped, as if planted in the ground. And in this the drawing came back. In a frantic way. I had to draw miles of lines, portraits, leaves, stems of branches, of patterns in all directions. Then I realized what I was telling.
I draw monsters and plants to soothe my anxieties when when they can’t sleep. To tell the journey and the vacations of my genders. To describe the worlds inside the body and which transfigure it. The escape of our thoughts in surreal forests. Shelters to our wounds, immense cocoons which exceed our limits.
I draw to celebrate the trans beauties and the tender monsters that inspire me and help me breathe.
Ophélie Longuépée
The new masculinity — Belgium — 2021
For a long time the image of man conveyed by the heteronormative society that we know was that of a strong, solid, indestructible man, a good father, hardworking and ready to do anything to protect his family. A kind of superhero in a suit who run the world for us.
Today, finally, the debate is opening around the very notion of masculinity and gender. Who are we, what are our values, why do we have to react in this or that way according to the gender that has been defined for us by our upbringing and our family?
What place does the deep sensitivity represented by femininity have in our society and in the image we project of ourselves? These questions are at the heart of the debates current.
Some Native American tribes and other cultures do not represent humans as something defined by 2 distinct genres but rather by a multitude of these at the how many different souls there are. In the High Middle Ages, men and women wore similar costumes, the dress was the norm for all and this one classified the men and women only by the length of the skirts. The necklines appeared late and high breeches to signify the difference between men and women.
It is interesting to rethink our relationship to clothing and to project different bodies in the original ones that were not thought out and created for them. Why does a person exploring her genres could she not show herself as she is by wearing example of outfits designed for an opposite ideal gender?
And why not explore all of our identities with the ultimate goal of discovering and represent our deep personalities?
This photo series aims to highlight this research and the way wehave to explore our ident ities with kindness and a touch of humour.
Charlie Neuwald
Filthy & Gorgeous / Not Allowed, Glitter’s Time — Belgium — 2020.2021
As a self-taught analogue photographer for the past 5 years, I first specified my work in portraiture.
The past two years, I started to dedicate my work to the iconography of the LGBTQIA+ and queer performance scene in Brussels.
It was after my encounter with Blanket La Goulue that I first sketched out photographic projects celebrating LGBTQIA+.
I initially saw this as an opportunity to connect with this incredible community but soon realised that the iconographic representation of it is far more important and necessary than incidental. Whether it is to mitigate the sense of otherness we are constantly confronted with, to celebrate ourselves or to inscribe our realities in time, it is a matter of doing real documentation and archiving, or at least trying to.
From intimate shootings to images captured on stages, self-expression and celebration have thus built the core of my subjects .
Eliad Viel
Flesh / Corps sain / Lignée — Belgium
Flesh is a work produced between 2018 and 2022 consisting of digitals and analog photographs, film and paintings. It represents the experience of the body and the initiation to its language.
Gynoos
A collaboration with a photograph about Self expression — Belgium
I come from North Africa, where there are no queer representations, transgression or alternative masculinities. We do not have the right to destroy the image of the virile man. Being queer is a struggle. First an internal fight, to gain self-confidence and the pride of showing off. Then it is an external fight. After winning yourself, you have to overcome others.
I take the opportunity to be far away to get through my voice what other queer people back there cannot express, so that they can be heard, seen. Photos are a new language for expressing who I am and telling my story. In the picture, the different people who make me up can agree and strike a pose together. But I don’t really strike a pose, since I dance, I talk to you and above all I look at you. My piercing gaze is not a provocation, it is a proud and frank look. In the collaboration with the photographers, I come up with an original idea that I interpret with my whole body. The artist in front of me captures images of my movements, of my makeup skin, of my clothes.
Kinkybanana
Confessions Nocturnes — Germany
“O Selene, reflective light of the night, guardian of our deepest secrets, hear my confession…”
Pagan Moon worshipping pray
Confessions Nocturnes, is a photostory project of LGBTIQ+ persons disclosing a sexual secret they confessed to the moon.
It’s a celebration of diversity in the multiplicity of bodies shapes, colors, gender identities, age, style etc …
As much as any other emotions, like joy, sorrow, or anger, sexual pleasure is a way to connect, to share, even with people that seem different.
The primal aspect of sexual desire is universal.
By telling about our intimacy we become whole.
