Dates: 13-17 July 2019
Venues: The British Museum and The Cloisters, Paul Webley Wing, SOAS University of London
Check out the details here!
This project took hours of creativity, a handful of spontaneous decisions, a couple of confusing errors and a huge amount of laughs. A big thank you to Kettleâs Yard, Cambridge, for making the QA âWOOHOOâ project happen and to the artists My Linh Le, Nastasha Boyce, Chris Deane, Daniela Riva Rosa, Lauren Clemmet, Christine Cowling-Jones, Elia Quijano, Shirley-Anne Fowlie and Nicholas Jones
Announcing our fantastic line-up of artists for QA ArtExh2019!
QUEER HABIBI is an anonymous, self-taught artist. They began their artistic project in 2018 to reveal LGBTQ life in Lebanon, Beirut. Their artwork is inspired by the stories of people they know and recreates sceneries of queer life in the Middle East. Although in recent years homophobia has been decreasing rapidly, Queer Habibiâs art project depicts a Middle Eastern queer community whose lives are still hidden behind closed doors.
CHARMAINE POH is a Chinese-Singaporean artist. Her practice combines photography with research, text, video, and installation, focusing on issues of memory, gender, youth, and solitude in the Asian context. She has showcased her work through platforms such as M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, the Singapore International Photography Festival, Objectifs Centre for Photography and Filmmaking, The Taipei Arts Festival, WeTransfer, Photoville, the International Center of Photography, and The New York Times. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes Asiaâs 30 under 30 in the arts.
JAY CABALU is a Filipino-born, Vancouver-based collage artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kwantlen University. Cabalu has exhibited his work in numerous spaces in Vancouver, such as the Federation Gallery, the Roundhouse, Hot Art Wet City and Ayden Gallery. In 2015, he appeared on season one of CBCâs competition-reality series, “Crash Gallery”. In May of 2018, Cabalu was featured in his first international exhibition, On/Off Grid, for the Foundation of Asian American Independent Media in Chicago.
NARUKI KUKITA is a contemporary figurative artist. Kukita was born in Japan and currently lives in New York City. Kukita received a BFA from Tama Art University in Tokyo and has attended the Art Students League and the National Academy School of Fine Arts in NYC. Kukita has participated in many exhibitions and gallery shows, and the artistâs work has been published in Velvet Magazine, Spank Magazine, GAYLETTER magazine, Mary, Tri-State Magazine and more.
RUDRA KISHORE MANDAL graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Sri. Venkateshwara College of Fine Arts in Hyderabad in 2002. He believes that his artworks are an exercise in the exploration of the self and as a creature of nature; a continuous and evolving understanding of his physical, sensual and spiritual needs. He has exhibited his work in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Surat, Delhi and Mumbai in India, and in Trento, Italy, as a part of a group exhibition from 2014 to 2016.
CHARAN SINGH lives and works in New Delhi and London. Singh is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Arts, working on his practice-led thesis titled âGoing Sideways: queering languages, landscapes and storytelling”. His latest exhibition (with Sunil Gupta), âDissent and Desireâ was at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India 2018, and previously at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, “Dissent and Desire” (catalogue) 2018, and at SepiaEye, New York 2017. Visual Aids (New York) has commissioned him to make a video work based in New Delhi in 2019. His work is also in several private collections.
MUSK MING is a Berlin-based Chinese artist who has carved out his own way of combining traditional Chinese art with contemporary techniques and Western aesthetics. Over the past decade, Musk Ming has been painting with passion and zest. His works have been exhibited in other galleries in Berlin, Cologne, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Mallorca, Essen, Groingen, Antwerp, Bangkok, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Beijing and Chiang Mai. Some of his paintings are held as private collections. To further connect himself to the vibrant art scene of Berlin, he opened an art gallery from 2010 to 2014.
HEEZY YANG is a Seoul-born Korean queer artist and activist who uses various media such as illustrations, photography, writing, and performance. He has been actively involved in multiple Pride parades and related events in Korea, as an artist, performer, and event organiser/host since 2013. His drag name is Hurricane Kimchi, and he is also the founder of Seoul Drag Parade and has been chief organiser since 2018. In 2018 he was named by Forbes Asia as one of Asiaâs 30 Under 30. Yang has recently started participating in international projects in London and New York.
JAMIE CHI is a Hong Kong Filipino artist who is based in London. After receiving an MA in Comparative Cultural Studies at Université de Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France, Chi advocated for Asian LGBTQ rights, in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Dublin. This experience led her to believe that human rights activism is best pursued through art and film. Whilst studying at the University of Philippines she delved into experimental cinema and in 2018 she was selected as one of five commissioned artist for Outrageous! London 2018, an Asian LGBTQ+ theatre performance at the ivo theater, London.
Jamie is participating in both the art exhibition and ‘Q’A Film Festival in 2019, showing her film on 13-14 July.
DAN VO founded the award-winning volunteer-led LGBTQ Tours at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and developed Bridging Binaries for University of Cambridge Museums. He works with museums and galleries to shine a light on objects which explore gender and sexual identities through a queer lens. He has previously been a volunteer photographer for Museum Pride London and several LGBTQ+ friendly football teams. His participation in the âQueerâ Asia Art Exhibition will be his first foray into portraiture.
SHOWNA KIM resides in Seoul where she develops work and exhibits internationally. Her work is based mainly on installation and extends to painting, drawing, photography, and graphic design. She consciously questions the ethics of human nature as seen through the lens of current scientific thought. After moving to the UK, she studied fine art at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury and Nottingham Trent University. In 2019, she was selected as an artist for national and international projects and group exhibitions in CYARTSPACE/DOCUMENT Gallery, SeMA Storage, SeMA Museum, Seoul, South Korea, and Millepiani Gallery in Rome, Italy as well as other locations.
ALQUMIT ALHAMAD is a self-taught visual artist from Syria. He began studying Fine Art in Aleppo, however this was disrupted bythe onset of the civil war and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq(ISIL) taking over his hometown of Raqqa. He is now a refugee who has been granted residency in Sweden. Alhamad believes that it was not only the war that led him to seek safe haven, but also the need to find the right space for artistic self-expression and actualisation. His artwork engages with causes that relate to him such as LGBTQ rights, refugee and immigration issues, gender equality, mental illness, among many others. He works with organisations in the Malmo area that promote equality, rights and better integration of refugees who seek an alternative home in Sweden. His work and art are therefore inseparable.
KAHN J. RYU was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in Shanghai, China, and educated in California, USA. His studies in Gender and Womenâs Studies at UC Berkeley launched a lasting fascination with regional discourses shaping public receptions and reprobations of the monstrous body, especially that of the transgender. After graduating with a Departmental Citation, he began directing self-nude videos in an attempt to merge this textual interest with a tactile insight from nature. In particular, trees have opened up a new world of possibilities to Ryu, with their myriad types of roots and shoots offering inspiration for his continued chapter of life as a diasporic being.
ROYAL holds a Masterâs degree in sociology and anthropology from the University of Bangladesh. Through painting, dancing and photography Royal is striving to reduce the stigma related to people living with HIV/AIDS and the discrimination against LGBTQ groups in Bangladesh. Royal has been working for the last twenty-one years with community based organisations and is closely working with national HIV/AIDS programs and National Human Rights Commissions in Bangladesh. He is also currently working on his project âArtivism and Sexualityâ, which is responsible for ensuring the care and support of people living with HIV/AIDS through art and counselling.