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. Zac Thompson’s biography exemplifies this often described trajectory: queer lives gravitating toward cultural metropolises, where artistic practices generate spaces of visibility and belonging that extend beyond the individual, shaping and sustaining the cultural vitality of the city itself. This dynamic is echoed on a formal level in the collaborative practice of Zac Thompson and JuJu. By bringing the seemingly static medium of photography into relation with the ephemerality of performance, their work produces a dialogical visual field in which difference is not resolved but carefully visible. In this interplay, collaboration becomes a mode of holding, across media, across perspectives, reconciling plurality as a constitutive and generative force.
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. Now based in Brooklyn, their practice unfolds within a trans and queer performing community, where friendship, artistic exchange, and chosen family become central points of departure. Working with disposable and point-and-shoot cameras, both artists document the same spaces, performances, gatherings, fleeting encounters, from slightly different perspectives. These parallel acts of seeing are translated into a process of collage, where two images are combined into a third: a shared visual field that blurs authorship and destabilizes singular viewpoints. Through the merging of analog techniques such as C-prints and silver gelatin, the works expand the material and conceptual boundaries of photography. The resulting images function as acts of world-making. Rather than documenting from a distance, they construct intimate, layered spaces that reflect the fluidity, multiplicity and interdependence of queer and trans life. In holding images and by extension each other, the project becomes both an archive of chosen family and a proposition for collective visibility.
Zac Thompson AKA Zacrilegious is a trans-nonbinary photographer, performer, and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. Raised in Colorado and Florida in an Evangelical Christian missionary community, photography was their lifeline. Allowing them to escape Florida to explore a queer, creative life in Los Angeles, then relocating to Brooklyn in 2017, where they’ve remained since. Their photos, zines, drag show productions, and professional work prioritize queer joy and art to challenge normative structures of gender, family, and care. They received their BFA from the University of Florida and their MFA from the School of Visual Arts. They are contributors to Hyperallergic and Paper Mag and have exhibited in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the International Museum of Art & Science in McAllen, TX, and Craig Krull Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. They have held residencies at The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, GA, and The Chautauqua School of Art in Chautauqua, NY. They are currently an adjunct professor of photography at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
Die Suche nach sicheren, willkommen heißenden Orten, Räumen, die freie Entfaltung ermöglichen und ein Leben jenseits der Ränder eröffnen, verläuft nicht nur entlang von Landesgrenzen, sondern ebenso zwischen Stadt und Land. Zac Thompsons Biografie steht exemplarisch für diese vielfach beschriebene Bewegung: queere Existenzen, die in kulturellen Metropolen eigene Räume schaffen und diese durch Kunst und Praxis prägen – nicht nur als Orte für sich selbst, sondern als Impulse, die urbane Räume lebendig und anschlussfähig halten. In der kollaborativen Arbeitsweise von Zac Thompson und JuJu spiegelt sich dieses Moment auch formal wider: Indem sie das vermeintlich statische Medium der Fotografie mit der Flüchtigkeit von Performance verschränken, entsteht ein dialogischer Bildraum, in dem Differenz bestehen bleibt. Dieses Zusammenspiel wird zu einer Form des Sich-Haltens – über mediale Grenzen hinweg, in der Gleichzeitigkeit unterschiedlicher Perspektiven.
Duet ist eine Zusammenarbeit von Zac Thompson und JuJu zwischen analoger Fotografie und Performance. Geprägt von Herkunftsgeschichten in religiös-evangelikalen Kontexten, verortet sich ihre Praxis heute in Brooklyn innerhalb der trans- und queeren Performance-Community, getragen von Freundschaft, Austausch und Chosen Family. Mit Einweg- und Point-and-Shoot-Kameras zeigen beide dieselbe geteilten Momente aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven: Performances, Zusammenkünfte, flüchtige Begegnungen. Es entstehen parallele Bildspuren, die in einem kollaborativen Prozess zu Collagen zusammengeführt werden. Zwei Aufnahmen verschränken sich zu einer dritten, einem geteilten Bildraum, der Autor*innenschaft auflöst und eindeutige Perspektiven unterläuft. Durch die Verbindung analoger Verfahren wie C-Print und Silbergelatine verschieben die Arbeiten zugleich die materiellen Möglichkeiten des Mediums. Die so entstehenden Bilder sind weniger Dokumente als Setzungen: verdichtete, intime Räume, in denen sich die Fluidität, Vielstimmigkeit und gegenseitige Bezogenheit queeren und trans Lebens abzeichnen. Indem die Bilder einander halten und mit ihnen die, die sie hervorgebracht haben, wird Duet zu einem visuellen Gefüge aus Nähe, Kollaboration und geteilter Sichtbarkeit, ein Archiv von Chosen Family und zugleich ein eigener Weltenentwurf.
Zac Thompson, aka Zacrilegious, ist ein*e trans-nonbinär*e Fotograf*in, Performer*in und Produzent*in in Brooklyn, New York. Aufgewachsen in Colorado und Florida innerhalb einer evangelikal-christlichen Missionsgemeinschaft, wurde die Fotografie früh zu einem zentralen Ausdrucksraum, ein Mittel, um sich imaginativ wie tatsächlich aus restriktiven Kontexten zu lösen und ein queeres, künstlerisches Leben zunächst in Los Angeles, später in Brooklyn zu realisieren, wo Zac seit 2017 lebt und arbeitet. Das vielschichtige Werk, von Fotografien und Zines bis hin zu Drag-Show-Produktionen und kuratorischen Projekten, stellt queere Freude und künstlerische Praxis ins Zentrum, um normative Vorstellungen von Geschlecht, Familie und Fürsorge zu hinterfragen. Zac Thompson absolvierte ein BFA an der University of Florida sowie ein MFA an der School of Visual Arts in New York. Arbeiten von Zac Thompson wurden unter anderem im Brooklyn Museum, im International Museum of Art & Science in McAllen, Texas, sowie in der Craig Krull Gallery in Los Angeles gezeigt. Darüber hinaus ist Zac als Autor*in für Hyperallergic und Paper Magazine tätig und nahm an Residenzprogrammen wie dem Hambidge Center (Georgia) und der Chautauqua School of Art (New York) teil. Aktuell lehrt Zac Thompson als Adjunct Professor für Fotografie an der Montclair State University in New Jersey.
© Zac Thompson and JuJu Lee
“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.
