Photo by Esra Gültekin
Live performance
5 hours
With the curatorial support of Performistanbul
As part of “Glitter and Grief”, organized by SoliTsoli, Nawara and Gay Shame
6. October. 2020 16:30 – 21:30
Haus der Statistik
Zak Kostopoulus (aka Zackie Oh) was a Greek drag queen artist, Queer and HIV activist living in
Athens. On the afternoon of September 21 in 2018, he had been beaten up by some men. The police
officers who came later continued to beat him even though he was lying down unmoving on the
ground. Afterwards he died in the ambulance. It has been two years now. Still, the killers are
unpunished and the trial continues.
Photo by Derin Cankaya
While daily governmental violence and oppression towards LGBTI+ people are raising through
exploiting of the COVID-19 crisis, in “White Roses, Pink Glitter”, Leman S. Darıcıoğlu remembers
Zak Kostopoulus and creates an image of Queer resilience and mourning. Borrowing glitter by Zak’s
instagram-post, titled “What if we get lost? I just follow the glitter,” Darıcıoğlu uses the glitter as a
metaphor of Queer strength and survival under the contemporary heteropatriarchal regime. While
the white roses generally used to express condolence in funerals in Germany, it is also referring to
the resistance group “White Rose,” under the Third Reich regime and furthermore, the pink
references the pink triangle of the Nazi’s symbol marking [male] Homosexuals. By merging the Nazi
time references with the contemporaneity, the artist asserts that Queers are resilient resistants of
today’s daily fascism which still causes countless deaths, violence and precariousness.
Thanks to SoliTsoli, Nawara, Gay Shame, Yener Bayramoğlu, Hasan Aksaygın, Performistanbul, Feo Marshmallow and Deniz Uysal for their support to make “White Roses, Pink Glitter” realize.