herstory of sexuality

This journey takes place in the home of a white, heterosexual family. In every step they take into their past, they begin to realize that the walls of this house are so fragile that it can only survive on the shoulders of its inhabitants. In order for the house not to shatter, the bodies have to shatter, and the inhabitants have to pretend that whatever happens is not actually happening, leaving the events in silence. The inhabitants hold onto this silence firmly. The white, heterosexual family legend is pursued blissfully with the silence that mounts among the inhabitants of the house.

without talking about

Writing, drawing on notebook

without talking about, notebook, drawing, mixed media. without talking about consists of a pink-covered notebook placed above the drawing of a cube-shaped box on checkered paper. The narrative inside the notebook begins with a sentence that could initiate many stories: "we were laying next to each other." It is followed by the same cube that appears beneath the notebook and gradually intervenes more and more in the narrative.

"without eye contact" / "we were surrounded by the darkness of the night" / "without talking about it" / "we" / "didn't" / "act" / "any" / "different" / "than" / "close" / "friends" / "do" / "around others."

As the cubes multiply, language is increasingly interrupted. The narrative is revealed through its own disappearance: handwritten text printed on white paper is blacked out until what remains is as much an absence as an account of what happened.

without talking about deals with a sexuality that is experienced but remains unexpressed and unnamed. The work departs from questions such as: Can sexuality be implied without using terminology directly related to it? Can the spacelessness between body and sexuality be approached through the space produced by memory and language, and by the absence of language?

The work also emerges from a deeply rooted political tradition in which talking about "societal matters" is positioned before, and often against, talking about sexuality. Rather than separating these two, without talking about brings them together through a shared absence of expression. Sexuality and societal matters become entangled precisely through what cannot, or is not allowed to, be said. The work approaches this absence not as emptiness, but as something that leaves its own traumatic trace.

best friends 4ever

Needlework on 1 × 1 m golden fabric

best friends 4ever addresses the unspoken and often unacknowledged desire between women. From a distance, the embroidery appears as a repetitive pattern: a woman on horseback and another standing on the ground. As we come closer, however, we realise that none of the women are the same. There is only one repetition: the woman on horseback holds a leash attached to the neck of the woman below.

The title refers to the ways desire between women is often rendered invisible under the pretence of friendship. At the same time, the image of one woman on horseback and another below evokes the figure of the prince charming, both a childhood cliché and an image through which heterosexuality and gender roles are repeatedly rehearsed.

Embroidered onto golden fabric, non-straight sexuality is not hidden but celebrated. The work takes up the heterosexual fantasy from within and tears it apart, reappropriating its familiar imagery through lesbian desire and BDSM aesthetics.