Natalia Różycka
Love by Natalia Różycka brings the subtle and fluid shades of queer relationships to life. Even though Różycka shows abstract and fluid shapes and forms, the work is narrative.
Festival Exhibition 2023
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Gökhan Tanrıöver
EVIDENCE OF MY SEXUAL MISDEMEANOR (UK)
Evidence of My Sexual Misdemeanor is a precise and conceptual photographic dissection of the experience of forced visibility. The Turkish military forces gay men to out themselves in a, by definition, hostile environment. It used to keep explicit photographs as „evidence“ for their sexuality to be exempt from service – an act of great violence towards a position of powerlessness. Gökhan Tanrıöver’s clear and minimalist compositions show white, banal household objects on flat, dark black backgrounds, diptychs with one clear object and one object tinted with fluids. He gives us autobiographical quotes from psychological military tests to determine his sexuality for the military. The objectiveness of the image contents paired with the very personal statements pinpoint to the fetishisation of one’s vulnerability. He closes the series with a portrait in grey tones, nude but not overexposed, revealing but also turned away. It is a reference to the images of intimacy that gay men construct to ‘evidence’ and legitimize their queerness. Tanrıöver was photographing a friend (as most men make pornographic images with their lovers or willing friends) with him on the bed. Whilst setting up, he thought the absence of himself in the photograph, whilst the focus of the camera being on the empty bedsheets where his body once was, made sense from a conceptual standpoint as he would later-on disappear in an invisible archive that the military owns.
Evidence of My Sexual Misdemeanor seziert fotografisch präzise und konzeptionell die Erfahrung erzwungener Sichtbarkeit. Das türkische Militär zwingt schwule Männer dazu, sich in einem, per definitionem, feindlichen Umfeld zu outen. Um vom Dienst befreit werden zu können, wurden explizite Fotos als “Beweise” für die sexuelle Orientierung der Männer aufbewahrt – ein Akt großer Gewalt, eine Position der Ohnmacht. Gökhan Tanrıövers klare und minimalistische Kompositionen zeigen weiße, alltägliche Haushaltsgegenstände auf flächigen, dunkelschwarzen Hintergründen, Diptyche mit einem klaren und einem betropftem Objekt. Tanrıöver titelt seine Arbeiten mit autobiografische Zitaten, Antworten aus dem militär-psychologischen Test zur Bestimmung seiner Sexualität. Die Sachlichkeit der Bildinhalte gepaart mit den sehr persönlichen Aussagen in den Titeln, verweisen auf die Fetischisierung der eigenen Verletzlichkeit. Die Serie schließt mit einem Portrait in Grautönen, nackt, aber nicht zu preisgebend, freizügig, aber abgewandt. Es ist eine Anspielung auf die intimen Bilder, die schwule Männer vom Militär aufgefordert sind einzureichen, um ihre Queerness zu „beweisen“ und zu legitimieren. Tanrıöver fotografierte einen Freund (wie die meisten Männer diese „pornografischen” Bilder mit ihren Partner*innen oder Freunden machen) mit ihm auf dem Bett. Während er das Set einrichtete, dachte er daran, dass seine Abwesenheit auf dem Foto und die Fokussierung der Kamera auf die leeren Bettlaken, auf denen sich sein Körper einst befand, konzeptionell genau ineinandergreifen, da auch er später in einem unsichtbaren Archiv des Militärs verschwinden würde.
Part of a diptych The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
Part of a diptych The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
Part of a diptych The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
Part of a diptych The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
Grid of 16 prints The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
Grid of 16 prints The title of the photograph comes from a statement from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- an internationally recognised psychological test that the Turkish military uses on gay men wishing to be exempt from the compulsory military service. The MMPI and other set of investigations are used to ascertain the ‘true’ sexuality of the examinee, as a way of legitimising otherness and surveilling bodies that they deem dangerous.
Until recent years, sexually explicit images of the applicants were also a requirement for exemption from conscription. Unknown to the public, these constructed images of domestic intimacy between men were collected by the institution and stored in their archive. These publicly inaccessible photographic documents serve to evidence the otherness of those made exempt by the military. Attempting my own photographic document with Bedfellow, I fetishise my invisibility within the frame as a reference to the invisibility granted by the military to those that are made exempt from service.
Michael Young
Michal Young plays with the vintage iconography of a gay erotic gaze that shaped Young’s own coming of age times in the late 80s and 90s. One collage shows two fragmented excerpts of vintage gay calendars in a subtle interplay of positive and negative space.
Irina Dmitrovskaya
Irina Dmitrovskaya investigates views on her own sexuality, othered as queer sexuality from the outside. She shows an interplay of closeness and distance, of fragmentation and framing.
Gökhan Tanrıöver
Evidence of My Sexual Misdemeanor is a precise and conceptual photographic dissection of the experience of forced visibility. The Turkish military forces gay men to out themselves in a, by definition, hostile environment.
Sara Davidmann
Sara Davidmann takes a narrative approach and works with sentimental and personal found footage. She tells the story of K, a hidden trans biography in her own family history.
Awuor Onyango, Mal Muga & Namikoye Wanjala
In a formal act of autonomy, Awuor Onyango, Mal Muga and Namikoye Wanjala decided to defy the regulations of the call for single projects and applied as a group with three aesthetically very different projects addressing questions of visibility and queer solidarity.
Margaret Liang
Margaret Liang’s subjects, including the artist, claim their space with a calm yet determined focus. Instruments of creating a self-determined body image appear as highly stylised icons of resolution.
Alien
Alien’s Bodybuilders are living and breathing artworks. Alien gives a bright and vivid exclusive into queer performance cultures from the UK.
Asafe Ghalib
Asafe Ghalib’s work sets a powerful stage for an intersectionally discriminated against community. Ghalib’s expressive monochrome portraiture is warm and dramatic.
Andrés Gregorio Pérez
Andrés Gregorio Pérez Dead Family series is an autobiographical and collaborative intervention into censored queer childhood memory.
