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Fag Goes on the Grand Tour of Italy

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Interview

 

Fag Goes on the Grand Tour is an interdisciplinary project where I queer the history of the Grand Tour and the performativity of travelling. I intersect visual arts, archeology, architecture, history, literature, and digital culture, and use a range of media, including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, text, installation, video, sound, and performance. 

 

 

 

Painting 

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Whilst in Italy I painted three large ‘capricci’ referencing archeology, architecture, history, identity, myth, and nature.

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Performative Painting

 

The concept of performativity present in my research was closely intertwined with, and in part first emerged from, my painting practice. So the performativity of painting was a starting point for other work that I created in this project. I recorded myself in character painting the character and then projected the video recording of the act of painting onto the painting itself in order to disrupt the traditional showing and viewing of a painting.

Performative Photo-videologue

 

Performative Photo-videologue documenting the 'Fag Goes on the Grand Tour' project in Italy and Germany in 2021-22. 

Musical Soirée​ @ BSR

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Info

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One of the over-arching ideas present in my project was that I wanted to emulate the experiences of the Grand Tourists, particularly those who were artists. As well as travelling as part of my research I also created works influenced by my experiences in Italy, much like the artists on the Grand Tour did before me. In the first piece of live performance, I responded to the grandiosity of the architecture of the BSR, and I held a musical soiree, like the grand tourists did in the past, during the opening night of the artists-in-residence group exhibition. I invited the Italian musician Michele Carreca to play the works of the English renaissance composer John Downland (1563 – 1626) whilst a performative painting video was projected onto the painting and I sat like a lady-in-waiting, listening to the music being played.

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Between 3 and 8 There is a Thong​

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Between 3 and 8 there is 5. And in numerology that’s my life path number. And here between those numbers hangs a thong that doesn’t cover much. It doesn’t cover the bits that I was born with. The bits that some want and others reject.

 

When it comes to my life path, it happens that I come to Germany in 2022 to spend one month of my life, as I did back in 1996, but under very different circumstances. This thong reminds me of how back then asserting my sexual rights and protecting my health found me homeless in a foreign country.  I find that even though I was in such a precarious situation, I was still one of the lucky ones. But Germany was not meant to be my home. Maybe I am back temporarily to complete a circle. Or maybe to widen the circle. Or to trace a new line, or multiple lines, off circle.

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