Changing room
21 jan - 12 feb 2023
The Why Not gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
https://www.thewhynotgallery.com/changingroom
The Why Not gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia
https://www.thewhynotgallery.com/changingroom
“Changing room” is inspired by the artist’s recent body of research focusing on the queer cruising cultures in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Loosely titled ‘May my hand touch a man’ covers historical perspectives and includes contemporary cultural take on. The combination of digital hook-up apps, urban strata, and the commodification of LGBTQ+ cultures means that traditional cruising grounds are continually changing their structures. Geospatial technologies have generated a psycho-sexual geography that spreads across digitally-connected homes and profiles.
The exhibition imagines an environment of the private clubs as the producers of non-hetero architecture, where participants change physical and psychological factors to reenact their desired characters in dark spaces. Through a series of newly produced paintings, the artist inspects the patriarchal nature of the built environment. Cruising is at once perceived as a resistance, an avant-garde, and a vernacular, with an active relevance to and beyond LGBTQ+ circles.
Installation view_1-5
Pretty boy from Caucasus (selfportrait) I. Acrylics and mixed media on canvas. 90x85cm. 2023
Pretty boy from Caucasus (selfportrait) II. Acrylics and mixed media on canvas. 90x85cm. 2023
Pretty boy from Caucasus (selfportrait) III. Acrylics and mixed media on canvas. 90x85cm. 2023