TOPS engages with what it means to hold each other while identity is in flux and how acts of representation can both affirm and unsettle processes of becoming. Identity is understood here not only as a bodily or temporal process, but as an evolving relationship, shaped through encounters, through looking, and through being looked at together. Images become sites where subjectivity is not fixed, but negotiated and held within a network of care and proximity. In this framing, vulnerability is not positioned as lack, but as a shared condition through which forms of kinship, solidarity, and presence emerge, practices of holding each other within states of physical uncertainty, transition and mutual becoming.
TOPS explores the vulnerability inherent in processes of bodily and subjective transformation, focusing on individuals who have undergone top surgery. Through a combination of group and individual portraits, as well as interior settings, the work traces moments of transition in which identity is continuously unraveling and re-forming. Moving between carefully staged compositions and snapshot-like situations, the images move between constructed presence and the immediacy of lived experience. Intimacy emerges as both a mode of care and a means of grounding during periods of physical distress and self-realization. Central to the work is the motif of holding each other, a gesture that extends beyond the purely physical to encompass emotional support, shared vulnerability, and collective processes of becoming. In these moments, the images articulate forms of kinship and care that sustain subjects through states of uncertainty, fragility and transformation.
Lindsay Perryman is a multidisciplinary artist from Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores the existence and visibility of transgender identities. They use film, photography, and collage to rely on a cultivated visual awareness to reinterpret and redefine the archival of queerness. Perryman’s work has been showcased in the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), Photo London and Melkweg Expo. Notable achievements include first place in the 2024 Palm Photo Prize and being nominated for Center of Photography at Woodstock 2025 Saltzman Prize. Their works are part of the permanent collection at institutions such as the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.
TOPS setzt sich damit auseinander, was es bedeutet, einander zu halten, während Identität sich im Wandel befindet und Repräsentationsprozesse zugleich bestätigen und destabilisieren können. Identität wird hier nicht nur als körperlicher oder zeitlicher Prozess verstanden, sondern als etwas Relationales, das sich durch Begegnungen, durch das Sehen und das gemeinsame Gesehenwerden formt. Bilder werden zu Orten, an denen Subjektivität nicht festgeschrieben ist, sondern innerhalb eines Netzwerks von Fürsorge und Nähe verhandelt und gehalten wird. In diesem Verständnis wird Verletzlichkeit nicht als Mangel begriffen, sondern als geteilte Bedingung, aus der Formen von Verwandtschaft, Solidarität und Präsenz hervorgehen. Praktiken des Sich-Haltens in Zuständen körperlicher Unsicherheit, Transition und gegenseitigen Werdens.
TOPS untersucht die Verletzlichkeit, die Prozessen körperlicher und subjektiver Transformation innewohnt, mit einem Fokus auf Personen, Erfahrungen mit Top Surgery gemacht haben. Durch eine Kombination aus Gruppen- und Einzelporträts, sowie Interieurs zeichnet die Arbeit Momente des Übergangs nach, in denen Identität sich fortwährend auflöst und neu formiert. Zwischen sorgfältig inszenierten Kompositionen und scheinbar snapshotartigen Momentaufnahmen bewegen sich die Bilder zwischen gesetzter Präsenz und der Unmittelbarkeit gelebter Erfahrung. Intimität erscheint dabei sowohl als Form von Fürsorge als auch als Möglichkeit der Verankerung in Phasen körperlicher Belastung und Selbstwerdung.
Lindsay Perryman ist ein*e multidisziplinär*e Künstler*in aus Brooklyn, NY, deren Arbeit sich mit der Existenz und Sichtbarkeit trans Identitäten auseinandersetzt. Lindsay arbeitet mit Film, Fotografie und Collage und nutzt ein geschärftes visuelles Bewusstsein, um das Archiv von Queerness neu zu interpretieren und zu definieren. Perrymans Arbeiten wurden unter anderem im Brooklyn Museum, im Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), bei Photo London sowie im Melkweg Expo gezeigt. Zu Lindsays Auszeichnungen zählen der erste Platz beim Palm Photo Prize 2024 sowie die Nominierung für den Saltzman Prize 2025 des Center of Photography at Woodstock. Lindsays Arbeiten befinden sich zudem in den ständigen Sammlungen von Institutionen wie dem Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.
“Hors-Jeu” is a French pun on the offside rule in football, literally “out of the game”, paired with a Turkish phrase meaning “queer people are everywhere.” This juxtaposition reflects the paradox at its core: queer communities in Turkey are systematically pushed to the margins, yet remain present across all social and geographic spaces.
The project follows Betty, who lives between concealment and emergence, navigating a reality shaped by transition, fear, and survival. These objects do not appear as incidental props, but as carriers of meaning, material condensations of self-assurance, protection and inner orientation.
TOPS explores the vulnerability inherent in processes of bodily and subjective transformation, focusing on individuals who have undergone top surgery. Through a combination of group and individual portraits, as well as interior settings, the work traces moments of transition in which identity is continuously unraveling and re-forming.
Is He Family? is a collaborative body of work created with Neil, the artist’s former drama teacher and now friend. The project takes its title from coded language once used within queer communities, where phrases such as “are they family?” functioned as signals of recognition, safety, and solidarity in contexts where openly queer existence carried risk.
Held by Each other: Community care and Queer Survival in Nigeria reflects many different forms of holding each other, rooted in Nigeria but also transcending geographically and culturally constrained spaces. It speaks to a search for sanctuary, for closeness in distance and for a sense of family within diverse constellations, universal longings that take shape as different forms of a warm embrace.
What has become of the people portrayed in Ali Mahini’s series Prince of Persia in the months since encountering the work, whether they are still alive, remains unknown. Nor do we know the current state of the park that served as their place of gathering. Concrete information from within and about Iran is, at present, scarcely accessible.
We are deeply moved by Tania Navarro’s story, as well as by the strength, resilience and joy of life reflected in the eyes captured by Luca Gaetano Pira in his documentary series.
Sergei Stroitelev’s series is carried by cool, subdued tones and soft light. Interiors and carefully placed objects interact and become carriers of emotion. A sense of being held unfolds, located not only in interpersonal relationships but also in objects and letters that store and transmit memory.
Bienyl Huelgas shows a poetic visual language of mythic imagery and written thought, presenting the notion of holding each other not only between individuals but as a collective structure: a shared carrying of pain, memory and desire within a community that stabilizes itself.
In moments of crisis, censorship and systematic erasure, the need for support becomes all the more urgent. Léa Fiterman develops a precise yet poetic visual language in response, in which formal restraint and tactile interventions play a central role.
Duet is an ongoing collaboration between the two artists Zac Thompson and JuJu rooted in film photography and performance, shaped by shared experiences of growing up in religious, evangelical environments.
Searching for safe and welcoming spaces, sites that allow for free self-expression and enable lives beyond the margins, aligns not only with geo-political borders but often also across the divide between rural and urban contexts.
林家夯 Lin Jaihang shows a fragile interplay of familiarity, desire and care through gestures of physical closeness. His photographs are tender and playful, characterized by light, warmth, and intimacy. In a darkening present, they offer a perspective that reminds us of the possibility of beauty in closeness.
