TQU’s #TheGalleryProject – Queer Art for All

Abhishek Chaudhary is a visual artist born in India who works with photography, new media and fiction. He is a student of photography and visual arts at the academy of art, architecture and design in Prague. Alex Giegold is a queer photographer and artist resident in Berlin. Her work questions power structures in visual culture, and she systematically engages in phenomena of social normalization. She is also part of the duo Giegold & Weiß. Alex has been making collages as prizes for monthly open-mic Uke Boogie (now in Berlin, Edinburgh and Sligo) for many years, and realized in 2015 that it was time to take it as very serious fun. He has been massaging human bodies professionally for the same amount of time. His musical project, We’re Only Made Of Snow, can be found doing solo full band shows regularly in Berlin. Alex hasn’t won any awards, but regularly rewards himself gold stars for successes such as leaving the house or flirting with hot peoples. Ambika came to Berlin from Toronto in 2003. Since then she’s played in a lot of bands, ran an underground art gallery, written a lot of fiction, and taken a lot of photos. Most of her time these days is spent writing happy queer novels set in the 1980s, being one half of the riot grrrl cello band Razor Cunts, and being the fiction editor of Leopardskin and Limes. When she’s not doing those things she’s usually covered in cats, reading a book or trying new vegan recipes. Maybe Aneta Willertová was born in October ‘92 in a small town somewhere in Moravia. Maybe she hasn’t been one of these talkative types. Maybe she believes that art can’t speak better than three thousand seven hundred and eighty-three words. Maybe she thinks that we all are going to die soon, because we’re just too stupid to handle ourselves and there are just more and more of us stupid people coming to this beautiful suffering world. But maybe Aneta is still full of love and maybe she loves to be like this, even if it hurts quite a lot. Can’t do anything about it. Maybe. Avital moved to Berlin from Tel Aviv six years ago. (Two locations of infamous borders.) Berlin is overwhelming. Chaos. Realising chaos is a given, and at the same time also wanting to create it, she started exploding ink containers on paper. Ink spots were created in a uncontrolled fashion. She started to outline the drops and smudges created to give herself a sense of order and control. Through closer inspection she could see the beauty and calmness of the details. The spots became smaller and the pens thinner until there was nothing left to define. At this point the drops were so small that a border obliterated them. There is always a deeper level where the line is not clear. In the end there is no border between paint and paper. Axthropix is an Instagramer who frames what may be mundane and banal to many, but seeks to show you the beauty it actually possesses. An avid traveller, she brings her moments from as many places as wanderlust allows her to. BLAME201’s universe is strewn with the filthy and devoted bodies of twinks on a post-pornographic hyperplane. They’re all fucking guilty. Since 2015, he’s been publishing, in a chaotic way, Teenage Paranoids and Harsh Twinks, both as a tribute and as a response to the I Apologize fanzine held by Ziggy during the George Miles cycle. He’s also created several sporadic experiences in sound since 2010, especially in Délinquance Juvénile since 2016. Dana Krusche is a illustrator and graphic designer in Berlin. She has previously designed websites, flyer, poster, record covers, t-shirts etc. for queer/ feminist projects, artists & musicians and festivals like several Ladyfests, Berlin Queer Festival, Up Your Ears! and more. She’s a happy half of Ethical Sloth, a queer DIY comic zine. Deborah Schmidt studied Political Science and Art and lives and works as a queer-feminist artist in Berlin. The focus of her painting is movement and queer-feminist body politics. Bodies are products of social norms, inherent in power and hierarchies, economic relations, body politics. The aim of her work is the attempt to uncover the processes of constructing gender and sexuality. In doing so she questions the order of binary gender constructions and the heteronormative focus on the body and tries to break with gender stereotypes. Her work also addresses the political terms of migration and racism in German society. Dion Hitchings purposely chooses to use untraditional media. He creates his works with various children’s art supplies. Using commercial box tops instead of traditional drawing surfaces has enabled him to break down pre-existing print, images, and textures while allowing the type and pictures from the box itself to become organically part of the portrait. During the creative process, he discovered the need to deconstruct then reconstruct the face to fit within the shape of the box. The results are portraits that have a shattered appearance with broken and missing pieces but also form a more powerful, interesting and often disturbing viewpoint. Felix d’Eon is a gay artist based out of Mexico City whose work is concerned with a representation of queer sensibility, romance, eroticism, history, desire, and identity in a style distinctly reminiscent, and quite convincing of different eras. His paintings celebrate desire in an unabashed and unembarrassed form, speaking in a language commonly associated with the status quo, and projecting into the past a sensibility which surely existed, but which could never before have been given voice. His beautiful fantasies reclaim a language which had been long denied us, and in the telling create a dream of love and sensibility, in which any shame is stripped away. His work allows, in the imagination, a past which could not have been to come into existence, and he fervently hopes it will play its small role in allowing fantasy to become reality; that his fantasy of the past will instead become a promise of what is to be. Frances Enyedy is an artist from Canada currently residing in Berlin. Attracted to anything queer, feminist, sensual and obscene, Frances likes to convey these ideas in portraits and figurative works. Art history also informs Frances’ aesthetic – for example when queering Orientalist paintings or reproducing Romantic era scenes in a feminist way. Frances loves producing strange cartoons as well. Alex Giegold and Tomka Weiß have been working in the field of photography and installation art as an artistic duo since 2011. Giegold & Weiß picture different perspectives on body politics, non-normative corporealities and sexualities. They shed light on the analysis of forms of discrimination, normalization and visual culture. Glow is a anthropology graduate with a psychology post-grad honours degree. She’s incredibly passionate about transforming the world into a more inclusive space to live, so that she, along with many other gendered people, can live in a safe world without prejudice and hate crimes rooted in senselessness. Glow’s modes of transforming this world include fashion as a form of communication, a language wherein she can address issues of gender, identity, while simultaneously challenging other people’s conceptions of the term. Another mode is through being hyper-visible, which sometimes puts her in dangerous positions. Essentially she seek to reinforce the fact that non-binary, trans, pansexuals, all these selves that exist, which do not fit the ‘normal’ mold, are not going anywhere and are as worthy of a godly nature as any cisgender person. Hagra is an artist and illustrator from Russia. Sometimes he takes part in exhibitions in Russia and abroad. But most important for him is to show his work online, because he believes the internet is one of the most democratic platforms. He’s a feminist, transgender man and pansexual. And Hagra draws people like him for people like him. So the main theme of his work is queer sexuality, gender identity, different types of discrimination and classism. His artworks explore different forms of sexuality and interactions with gender identity and the interweavings of masculinity and femininity, especially those that are not represented in the mass media. Helen uses a pseudonym, because she would like to remain anonymous. She was born in Russia and is now 26 years old. She went to college to study design and to university to become a design teacher. She’s been painting for more than ten years. Her work has been shown in local, regional and interregional exhibitions. Her work uses expressionism and abstract expressionism. Hilde Atalanta is an illustrator and painter, currently living and working in Amsterdam. She loves making portraits and illustrations, and she likes to experiment with styles. Hilde mainly works with (colored) pencils, watercolor, acrylic and ink. Her work revolves around the search for identity and different forms of relationships and sexualities. In it, she likes to play with gender; many of the – often androgynous – boys she paint are based on female models. In one of her recent projects called The Vulva Gallery she focused on body positivity and female empowerment. Ihar Paulau began taking photographs as a child in Belarus, but shelved his camera when he pursued painting in art school. He went on to study humanities and design at university before returning to photography in 2013. Inspired by social situations and the natural emotions of people, Ihar travels across Europe snapping unique moments that often go unnoticed. His series, Without a Mask, was the winner of the inaugural Freedom of (Self-) Expression competition. Jakub is an open minded human being who is fascinated by human behavior, sexuality, and gender stereotypes, among other issues. Flying between different medias like photography, performance, fashion design, video and installation, he believes in a strong black spirit which gives lots of positive and beautiful individual energy and is connected to the sun, because black is the color which absorbs most of the sunlight. The theme of gender is also important to him. It is something which goes through his heart and his penis and every time he thinks about it he tries to push the boundaries others have surrounding his body, his styling, his face and his behavior. He is uncomfortable with social norms especially in fashion. Jane likes to do ALL THE THINGS. She’s written a lot of short stories and poems that you can find in various journals and all over the internet, and she’s currently finishing a novel about a bunch of magical sex worker witches in Berlin. Jane’s also one-half of the riot grrrl cello band Razor Cunts, the poetry editor for Leopardskin & Limes, a co-founder of Queer Stories Berlin, and a creative writing tutor. Occasionally, she likes to star in art films and lesbian clown porn. She thinks shameless positivity is underrated. Jespa Jacob Smith is a DIY-visual artist and poet. Their work focuses on transitional and surreal situations as well as language and the way we try to use it to bridge the space between each other as well as ourselves and our thoughts. Their art and poetry is informed but not limited to experiences of gender and trans oppression, marginalisation, privileges and depression. They have been featured in various DIY publications. They have shown their video art and performed poetry on a few occasions in the UK, Canada and Germany. Kamee Abrahamian’s great-great grandmother was working the cotton fields of Adana with her mother-in-law when she went into labour. Her mother-in-law tore off a piece of fabric from the bottom of her own skirt to wrap the baby with after she was born, on a small patch of grass under a big, beautiful tree. Her great grandmother, Makrouhi Kehyayan, was the last in her maternal lineage to be born on their ancestral homelands. LB is a public school teacher, zine writer and genderqueer artist from Chicago, IL USA. They sing and drum for the feminist queer band The Ovens and write the zine Truckface. They are inspired by queer heroes of the past and their own rage directed at systems of power. LB is self-taught and only gets to paint during breaks from teaching. Lea Daniel is a self-taught artist from Russia currently based in Ireland. Her inspiration is art nouveau style, British theatre, mythology and stories, movies and fashion, everything Celtic. She tends to prefer scary stories over any other. She’s also interested in medicine and history. Born in 1982, in Lure, France. He has a mother, a father, a big brother, a big sister, a sister in law, 3 nieces. Always liked to draw. Changed home five times from the age of 0 to 15. Finished graphic design school in 2002 in Marseille. Worked for a salary as a junior graphic-designer for two years. Left the communication professional field, looking for graphic freedom. After that he used his driving license to deliver pizza for several years. Moved to Berlin in early 2014. LITA (Life Is Torturing Awesome). Created from restless remains, void-originated, Lita is an intrusive person, yes, she cares! She prettifies her carnal residence by digestion and contemplations. Trances daily and composes, carves, paints, and tears to shreds. Recklessly destroys order, desperately creates meanings, and painfully broadens the track. Lives afield. Ecstatically respects live! Born in 1983. Lives in Prague, Czech Republic. Exhibited her artworks in Czech Republic, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Italy and Germany. Influenced by art nouveau, art deco and cubism. Portrays almost exclusively feminine characters which always somehow deviate from generally accepted cultural constructs of normativity and places them in an abstract ornamental world with special attributes. Uses a combination of techniques: gel, lacquer, acrylic or ink pens on hard paper or canvas and selective photo-colorization. Works as a tour guide in Peru for a Czech travel agency and as an anthropologist as well. Megan Potoma is a Philadelphia native, currently completing her BA in Art Therapy at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. As an aspiring art therapist, Potoma works in a variety of mediums with a strong focus on process. As a queer artist, Potoma explores significant themes relevant to their life through concept art. Many of Potoma’s works are focused around topics dealing with LGBTQ issues, intersectional feminism, gender, societal pressure, sex, and views of self. With their artwork they extinguish harmful stereotypes and pressures put on women and members of the queer community. Using photography, video, digital and performance, Melanie Menard explores the tensions between the individual and the place and circumstances they inhabit, and the human mind in conflict with itself. Melanie’s performance mixes popular alt-drag cabaret with live-art aesthetics to question gender identities, and portray individuals fighting restrictive social norms. ‘Tricyclic Transform’ theatricalizes the genderqueer experience by documenting the creation and self-destruction of my ‘biologically-challenged drag-queen’ alter-ego Miss Liliane. They try to negotiate restrictive gender-roles by performing symbolic rituals, but the inability of their mind to comfortably inhabit any predefined role causes them to get trapped in an endless loop of repeated, pointless gestures. ‘Tricyclic Transform’ presents gender as a cyclical spectrum: Miss Liliane tries on gender identities as they try on clothes and body language. But new inner conflicts arise, propelling them further round the gender wheel, until they come back full circle, to a genderless, endlessly questioning, naked body. Musa (b. 1992 Baghdad) lived his childhood under the regime of Saddam Hussein and the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. At the age of eleven, US forces invaded Iraq under the guise of regime change and freeing the Iraqi people from authoritarian rule. The liberty that was promised to them never came and the painful reality of these experiences influenced Musa in various ways. He is a visual artist, writer and an activist, committed to defending gender equality, LGBT rights and women’s rights. He currently lives in Amman, Jordan where he is studying psychology. By expressing his own painful experiences in his work, the work itself becomes a vehicle to give minorities a voice. Narong Tintamusik was born in Dallas, TX in 1991 and raised in Bangkok, Thailand for 10 years. He moved back to Dallas when he was a freshman in high school. He obtained his Biology undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Dallas with a minor in visual arts. Even though his education lies within the scientific domain, he won modest amounts of awards and recognition for his art. He has been the recipient of scholarships graciously provided by the DeGoyler Memorial Fund from the Dallas Museum of Art and by the Bryce and Jonelle Jordan Scholarship Foundation at UTD. He hopes to continue with his underwater adventures along with actively pursuing his passion as a professional artist. NWarrior loves art and their goal in life is to become a good human. NWarrior loves to draw, and their art plays a huge role in their life. Their two pictures are based on a story they developed called “Fate Family”. This is the story about three adult people, who are in love with each other. In this story NWarrior shows that love is something kind, something warm. Love is about trust, about caring, about understanding. Love is about respecting each other. There are so many scary, terrifying and negative things in this world, and they think that a lot of people (including themselves) need something cute, kind and positive. “Fate Family” is their way of bringing love to the people who need it. Oleksandra Lychak is an artist from Ukraine. She studied at the Art Studio and the School of Contemporary Art and works in different techniques such as photo art, abstract painting, installation, and more. She had several exhibitions in Ukraine and Belarus. She likes to think that art exists to expand the scope of our perception and to get rid of prejudices and stereotypes. Her work is about the formation of female sexuality, freedom and violence – physical, sexual, psychological. She sees violence as a lack of freedom to be yourself. In her artworks she often uses personal belongings, clothes, lingerie. Renaud Héléna likes plastic and synthetic fabric. He likes cutting trash bags to transform them into a garland. He also likes listening to lyrical music (with violin and other classical instruments) like in the movies, except that right here he will be the one saving you. He likes mundane conversations that fail to reach anyone. He wonders if you come here often. He like to use witches potions to find love. He likes pulp cushioning, but he does not like the work of those that want to save us. He likes to get rid of things and then to feel free for a while. Rurru Mipanochia is a cyborg built in Nibiru, but discarded to the Earth by defects in its operating system, reborn in Mexico City. Rurru studied Visual Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Design, UNAM, and graduated in the year 2012. In 2015-2016 Rurru got chosen for the program of young creators, FONCA (Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes), a renowned art scholarship in Mexico. Her/his/its works were exhibited in Mexico, Latin America, Europe and the USA, as well as published in national and international magazines. Satadru is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Delhi. He completed his M.F.A. in 2000 at Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, India. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship from the University of California UCSC, DANM and did his project there in New Media Art. His work takes shape in varying formats and focuses on the gender topography of South Asia. He also did some performances in the last few years, where he was addressing Oligospermia (low sperm count), sperm donor boys and telling a grisly epic allegory of Gynecomastia/male boobs. Sofia Odintsova is a graphic designer by profession. She’s engaged in commercial illustration and poster art and writes articles on culturology and art criticism. In both her work and her life she likes ambiguous questions and roundabout ways. Therefore, in all her creative searches, one way or another, she comes back to human beings and their complex relationships with reality. She is extremely concerned about the pulsating machine mode of our time, experienced by each of us in form of loneliness and mental disorientation, a state that is unacceptably silenced and already therefore an acute social problem to face. Related considerations and alarming forecasts can be found in many of her works. Suriani was born and raised in São Paulo. In 2002 while studying Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo, he felt the need to relate to the city through art. He found in graffiti and collages an effective and transgressive way to live the city. In 2007 he moved to Paris to start a masters degree in Fine Arts at the Université Paris VIII. Since then he has integrated into the local street art scene. Tom Moore works with Lost History & Found Flowers, Low Spectacle & High Fashion, New Monsters & Old Hollywood, True Crime & False Lashes, Fresh Guts & Worn Clichés, Breaking Hearts & Accelerating BPM. Drawing is séance. Film is spell casting. They have exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and the ICA. Their films have been screened at the London Independent Film Festival and Donau Festival. They sing and teach drawing. Techwoo (officially Teodora Doncheva) was born in the town of Plovdiv in 1981. In 1999 she graduated in graphic arts from the art school there. In 2008 she got her MA degree in Scenography from the National Academy of Art in Sofia. She had a few stand-alone exhibitions and has also been a participant in joint shows and co-projects. Techwoo loves drawing what she sees on the inner side of her eyes. Tim is ANGRY! Bloody ANGRY! But Tim knows that being angry all the time won’t make things easier. Living in the most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, makes it hard for Tim to be herself. Too much religious and cultural taboos, restrictions, regulations and norms that she can not follow and relate to. Being an activist, bisexual & an atheist is a perfect recipe for disaster. The only options available are to follow their rules so that nobody bothers you, or to be yourself and get fucked! Tim is somewhere in between, not completely able to be herself yet. Candra is a trans person who also fights everyday to be herself. Her dream is to have Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS). You can help to make that dream come true. Umba – this is the place-name in the area in which he grew up, and even a reduction of his name. Under this name he posts his trans and queer work online. His other name is Karl M. He’s a trans man in a homosexual partnership with another trans man, and a self-taught artist. He also volunteers for the T-Action program (Russia, St. Petersburg), which trans people carry out for trans people. In T-Action he coordinates a project on HIV-prevention among trans people. Violetta Fitsner is a Russian student who studied law at Baltic Federal University of I. Kant, in Kaliningrad. She has been drawing almost all her life. When she was sixteen, she finished art school and stopped drawing. She wanted to be a lawyer to fight for justice and protect people’s rights. Three years ago, when she went to Iceland as a volunteer, she happened upon a glacier and realized that her daily problems were nothing in comparison. That glacier had faced millions of people and their stories and problems. All of those people had passed away eventually but the glacier stayed. She then understood, that she needed to spend her life doing something special, something that she loves. She always cared about freedom and equality. That’s why her pictures center around problems like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. She strongly believes that art is one way for people to change the world and it is the way that she’s taking. Yuka is a traveler, aspiring psychologist, book worm, explorer and part time musician and photographer from St. Petersburg living in Kiev. She loves this special state when you just stand still, looking either inside yourself – contemplating, half-meditating – or outside, watching something peculiar, or so beautiful you wonder if your heart is going to explode. She likes symbols and how they make you feel when you come across them in real world. Like sometimes you just stumble upon something so strange/extraordinary, that you can’t stop staring at it. Another thing that fascinates her is the combination of ‘figure’ and ‘background’, how something in the center of composition interacts with something in the background. She is fascinated by how, when you take pictures, you don’t only capture what’s outside of you, you actually reflect what’s inside of you as well.” Zac Slams cuts up images and texts to depict gender and sexuality as ways to escape oppression but also as forms of subjugation. Slams is a collage and video artist originally from the UK but currently living and working in Canada. She has recently exhibited at The Feminist Art Conference in Toronto.