Thu 28 September 2023
Grands Carmes — THE OPENING — 18:00
The vernissage of the exhibition curated by Homografía’s Agathe Dananaï & That’s What X Said will be the occasion to savour our favourite magical cocktail by Fatsabbats while enjoying some music ambiance by The Dikets. The selected works echo the festival’s programme and explore new territories of encounters, sexualities and lives. The mediums used and the points of view are multiple, respond to each other and match up. The artists explore the fluidity of desires, identities and representations. They proceed to a queerization of spaces, populated by artefacts, and seek, through constant mutation, to make the invisible visible.
ALLOBONSOIR
Caprison, To all the Boyz I’ve loved, Orange Juiiice, Alien Bazar — Belgium — 2022.23
The artworks shown here are from a series of 3D visuals, realized using Blender, Zbrush and Substance Painter.
These portraits try to question the notion of identity, a concept that isn’t fixed nor essential.
The artist works on fluidity in the digital age, on shameless and multiple imaginaries.
He portrays life stories others than his own, ones that are striking him, touching him.
His imaginary is mostly focused on his circle of friends. He tries to bring out their individualities and their irreverence to the world surrounding them, and which they often find too narrow.
USSI’N YALA
If We Were Allowed — France — 2022
Ussi’n has been questioning gender identity and sexuality in Africa and across its diaspora for about four years now. During his research he realized how difficult it is to find visual references of black African queer couples. The archives that are found are mostly those of African American people. It is therefore in late 2021, after much reflection and personal research, that he decided to document queer couples from the African diaspora by making intimate portraits of black and interracial couples, and by collecting personal testimonies about their identities and how these young people explore their relationship in today’s world. His project If we were allowed gives voice to a community of Africans often erased from the collective consciousness who find refuge and a little freedom in Western countries. Their stories illustrate the vastness of the African LGBTQIA+ community. As a black African and a gay person, doing this project allows him to contribute to the community by developing a visual archive that will serve as a reference for current and future generations
CHLOE ARROUY
Device, Knife 1 & 2 — Belgium — 2022.23
Chloe’s sculpture practice is an experimental approach of traditional techniques combined with metal shaping. The objects she creates often refer to medieval societies and their abundant production of disturbing forms. She manipulates symbols from different Western cultural contexts to question their paradoxes and uses them as experimental grounds. Her practice pushes her to question the empathetic power of forms, from sensuality to austerity, innocence to infamy. She explores their ability to provoke a physical sensation, often that of pain. The universe she summons resonates with those of witchcraft, torture, BDSM and adolescence, many favorable territories for evoking her relationship to existence, sexuality and culture.
At the heart of her practice is a dynamic of revaluation, that goes beyond the disguise and the reappropriation of symbols. The materials used are mainly recycled, sometimes directly from obsolete household objects.
Frau Diamanda
SQUAT PERSONAE — Spain — 2018.23
Squat Personae is an ongoing photography project, started in 2018 as an alternative way to conceive of and interact with the heteronormative environment. This work emphasizes the contrast between the body and architecture, and the evolution of the sexualization of spaces. It is an aesthetic and sexo-political research in which desire and desire take place without the limitations imposed by the cis-heteronormative gaze. Here, the transvestite’s eye through the lens of the camera attempts to refocus and deconstruct concrete and real spaces, from which she was originally excluded.
Squat spaces have become living laboratories allowing the exploration of gender, desire and sexualities in politicized sites, where decrepit architecture and bodies performing different desires meet in a raw dialogue. This project began as a photographic study of cis men, then expanded to LGBTQI+ migrants in squat environments in Barcelona. It is also a tool in progress, developed by a disguised identity, whose analysis, which has become anthropological, uses different tools, notably the camp, hyperbolic and exaggerated point of view, which reflects our own way of seeing the world.
CLEO CHROME
Boaxhell — Belgium — 2022
Cleo Chrome is a project born from chromy functional surfaces & daily objects inspired by weapons as a way to reverse the gendered projections often put on habitat and its displays. Today, Cleo Chrome brings HeartxX out from les abysses. By building landscapes of melted nowadays references and twisted chains on lava-edged shapes, She designs body adornments ɱąɖɛ ₄ d₃₃p{s₃lf}Lₒᵥ₃ᵣₓₓ in a genderful perspective ࿐ Through adornment, Cleo Chrome questions ways of embracing identities by producing empowerment tools, blazing armors to highlight & emphaze our chests, necks & bodies as it should be 🝮⏟✧
Nicky Lapierre
Nour Beetch
GOOSEBUMPS — Belgium — 2023
At Reset
While the spectator stands here, in the hole of our intimacy, everything lies skinned, penetrated, in a monstrous and insolent nudity. Desire, our fantasies, the skins of our lovers, friends and other endearing souls ~ outbursts, hesitations, costumes, crumpled sheets, dreams, fluids, a fire on a beach, a sex shop front, attacks in the full trans clubs, our scars, love that collapses, a rose that burns away, a cloud of makeup, Dorothy Allison, a cry into the void, the killer sidekicks, an engine that pierces the night.
GIUSEPPE ARNONE
Répression de la diversité, Les phalluniers, A travers les arcades — Belgium — 2023
Giuseppe Arnone is an artist and student in Master 1 at ARTS2, living in La Louvière.
Born in a conservative catholic family, he started to question sexuality in his artistic practice as an everyday battle. His work explores erotism within the LGBTQIA+ community. Through textile, sculpture, and other technics, the artist places his community – that is still fighting to defend its multiple identities, sexualities, differences – on the front row. Diversity lies in the heart of his preoccupations, as well as repression and discrimination, still occurring today.
LEA BRAMI
Mue, Mémorial des récits obliques — France / Belgium — 2020.22
The overpropagation of dominant narratives sometimes obstructs the perspective of others. The Mémorial des récits obliques and Mue invite us to reconnect to these whispered and invisibilized stories and knowledge.
These artworks are a testimony of an unlived past, still experienced every day. They speak for these lives and mutations, omitted by the grand narrative. They teach us that other choreographies are possible, in places where scarred and fragmented bodies are redefining themselves for themselves.
LEYLA CABAUX
TRIPTY·QUEER — Belgium — 2023
TRIPTY·QUEER reinvents artistic representation, celebrating love and queer relationships experiences. Transforming the idea of “TRUE LOVE NEVER DIES” into “QUEER LOVE NEVER DIES”, this project questions the norms of our cis-straight normative and queerphobic society. This triptych highlights underrepresented bodies and identities, giving queer love visibility in different spaces, whether within or outside our community. Adopting the triptych esthetic, TRIPTY·QUEER elevates queer love to a sacred art status. It’s an artistic exploration focused on love, reappropriation and pride, transcending norms and injunctions.
