About     Contact

 

Zak Kostopoulos (Zackie Oh!), a queer drag-performer activist and human rights defender, died on 21 September 2018.
He was trapped inside a jewellery store on Gladstonos Street in Athens by the shop’s owner.
Despite trying to escape he was badly beaten by the jeweller, before being arrested and beaten again, this time by eight police officers.
He died while being transported by ambulance to the hospital.



Olga is a former model. Her image and body was massively exploited and objectified by the fashion industry.
Her everyday mood and confidence was depending on her beauty and the way other people would see her.
Her identity as a woman was always defined by the male gaze. 
It was only when she realised she had been depressed for a long time that she decided to quit modeling.

Delia was an American-born slave in South Carolina.
In 1850, biologist Louis Agassiz commisioned Joseph T. Zealy to take a series of daguerreotypes of slaves in South Carolina.
He later used them as evidence to support his theory that Black people were biologically inferior to white people.
Per Agassiz’s orders, they were stripped naked and forced to pose. 
Delia's black body was used without consent, dignity, or compensation, to support the vision of white science.  



The power to construct identity has always rested with the powerful.
From colonialism and racial Othering to an inherently dominant masculinity and sexual Othering, the identity of the Self has always been placed in the center.
While still structuring the social norms, it continues to alienate the person labelled as the "Other."
As a consequence this leads to social inequalities and collective traumas.

If identities are innately relational, how can we use new forms of power to construct different realities than the one that sees the white cis-male at the center?

By creating this spatial textile installation I seek to establish a different reality of the "Other" identity. The viewer engages with the piece physically and thus finds themselves in a constant dialogue due to the unavoidable dissociation.

*this (visual) research was the departure point for my talk "Sexual othering and the public lynching of Zak Kostopoulos (ZackieOh!)" at the Undisciplining Photography Symposium organised by The Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, Nederlands Fotomuseum & Research Center for Material Culture.