Meet the t'ARTists

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Alfea Morelli @alfinosaure

RUINE

RUINE is a work that simulates the wear and tear of time on digital objects: abstract shapes, avatars or environments. I made several proposals, erosions, digital wear in the form of bugs or reducing the number of faces to a minimum. It's a fictional, simulated, immediate passage of time, trying to imagine what the future could looks like to a 3D model. I also question the fashionable aesthetic in the middle of 3D creators by making a project in line art, black and white without any shader.

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I'm a trans Digital Design student from France, I'm using 3D as a way to shaping the genre, questioning it and thinking about its limits. I'm also working on the idea that 3D can be a tool to rethink the way we can make comics and make this process accessible to everyone. I'm a DragQueer and I try to be a digital musician in order to be able to bring together drag, 3D and music in a large transdisciplinary project.

 

Amber Richards

COMPLETE

My work explores sexuality, gender, and how heteronormativity can unconsciously affect our lives. This set of images looks at the feeling I had growing up, the feeling of being incomplete in oneself, and how this feeling can turn inward.

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I’m a non-binary queer artist who has trained as a photographer and work as a graphic designer. I find comfort in art and have used it as a tool to help me explore my identity.

 

Amelia Brown @amelialbrown

Seen/ Seeing

This series is about seeing and being seen as a queer person - our visibility in the world and what we see when we look out at it.

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Amelia is a queer writer, maker and t'ART editor, who likes to make work about people, love of all kinds and water.

 

Bee @beeillustrates

Bad Days (2022) / Can’t Talk Right Now (2022) / Girl on Sofa (2022)

Bee’s foray into the arts and subsequent illustrations were initially born from their own lived experiences as an LGBTQ+ person who has suffered from mental health issues throughout their life. They draw inspiration from artists and movements both past and present, referencing everybody from the Pre-Raphaelites to Paula Rego. Bee’s illustrations often take a critical view of social, political and cultural issues while exploring concepts such as mental health, gender identity, and the artist’s own lived experiences.

 

As a queer person, Bee’s own identity is a central theme to much of their work, and they strive for their creative practice to be a space where not only themselves, but others too, can feel seen, represented, included and celebrated.

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Bee is a queer nonbinary illustrator, curator and interdisciplinary creative currently based in London. They create distinctive, quirky illustrations, often paired with short essays to educate, empower and inform on a range of important topics. Primarily focusing on mental health, Queerness, Feminism and current affairs, Bee's aim is to make complex theory and difficult subjects accessible and palatable for the modern millennial and Gen-Z audience. Bee graduated from The University of Edinburgh with a First Class BA (Hons) in Illustration, having also completed courses in Queer Studies and Social Anthropology. Bee has recently been Longlisted for the World Illustration Awards, for their piece Lovers, 2021. Selected clients include Meta, Stonewall, Microsoft, Refinery29, Spotify, Schuh, Vans and more.

 

Coco Jackson @conversewithcoco

A Collection of Self Portraits: Past and Present

This is a collection of self portraits from past and present, some more vulnerable than others; an exploration of sexiness and self. A journey through self love and acceptance towards queer joy.

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Coco Jackson is a black, queer, woman who creates art. She is a London based creative photographer who is self-taught and explores a variety of types of photography including but not limited to travel photography, portrait photography and event photography anything from theatre shows, circus shows, live music, burlesque and cabaret events.

 

GG Fidanza

What are you trying to fulfil?

This piece of art was born in a time where I felt stuck in a loop. Drowning in my surroundings and seeking something that would make me feel alive, I started making art and this painting came out, together with the following piece of writing:

Seeking myself.

Exploring every inch of my body,

of my soul.

Feeling every emotion,

a knot up my throat.

Bitter, free tears.

What is my place in the world?

What am I trying to fulfil?

 

Weird shapes and self-portraits

Weird shapes and self-portraits is a project born during lockdown, when confined within four walls I would escape reality by creating shapes with my body, with a phone camera and a very restricted space.

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I do art to fulfil the desperate need to get out what I have inside, to solve the chaotic puzzle that is in my head. My approach to art is often autobiographical but also abstract, to allow other people to have different readings of my pieces of work. I like experimenting with techniques and materials, freely messing around to express my feelings and thoughts.

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Hana Jurić @studiohanajuric

Altitude No. 4

Through my work I investigate the concept of presence. I use digital software as an internally focused lens and as an extension of my thoughts. I consider all my artworks to be paintings.

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Hana Jurić is a Croatian visual artist working in the fields of painting and new media. In 2014, she graduated with the title of Master of Education in Fine Arts from the Art Academy in Osijek. After graduation, she lived and worked in Canada, Portugal, and Austria. In 2019 she returned to Croatia and started an independent art gallery Moja Soba in Zadar.

 

JP Seabright @jpseabright

M/OTHER[RAIN]BOWARD

This piece highlights the inherent queerness in many of our everyday items – in this case, a computer motherboard – represented by the rainbow threads strung across it. The work also honours the many LGBTQ+ people who have been instrumental in the development of information systems and computer science: Alan Turing, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Peter Landin, Edith Windsor, Lynn Conway and Audrey Tang (amongst many others).

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JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer writer living in London. They have three pamphlets published: Fragments from Before the Fall: An Anthology in Post-Anthropocene Poetry by Beir Bua Press; the erotic memoir NO HOLDS BARRED by Lupercalia Press, and GenderFux, a collaborative poetry pamphlet, by Nine Pens Press. MACHINATIONS, a collaborative experimental work, will be out from Trickhouse Press in Autumn 2022. More info at https://jpseabright.com and via Twitter @errormessage.

 

Kia Matanky-Becker @kiaannalauran

Hot Wired Cross Wired: Cumming Complications

Kia Matanky-Becker is a sculptor performance artist and poet from the midlands. They are inspired by a childhood growing up on such Tv genius as Robot Wars and Scrap Heap Challenge. They create structurally unsound metal messes and artfully unsafe installations. They are interested in story telling and world building especial in relation to queer coming of age narratives. Their sculptures always have some shit to chat, think - what the Robot Wars robots would say if they were queer and in love.

 

Lauren Bulla @celestialdisco

Internal Reflections; Who are the Monsters?

The two colorful pieces showcase clear lines detailing flowers. The vibrancy of the works invite the viewer in. Meant to reflect the way we often assauge our deeper emotions, making them palatable to the outside world. The larger piece is chaotic, messy, and its' harder to determine where any of the lines begin or end. This work incorporates elements of the others with the same bright colors sporadically placed throughout; but is moreso expressing all of the messy bits that make us hard to digest - the things we don't often share. The purpose of these works is to provoke internal reflection - something I feel a lot of people struggle with. It's difficult to ask ourselves hard questions - "Who are we to the monsters in our nightmares?" - even harder to question "How often are we the monsters in someone else's narrative?".

 

Medium: Watercolor, ink, old bedsheet.

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My name is Lauren, I am a 25 year old Human Rights Law Masters student from TX and a creative as often as I can make time for it. I used to run a small business back in the states and I'm focusing my energies on creating works that express more of my internal reflection process but also create avenues for lifes convoluted questions.

 

Lizzie Rose @r.lizzie

Rain On My Skin

I wrote this poem warm in bed, in a random flat in Germany, listening to the first rainstorm to fall in months following this Summer's heat. I think it articulates my desire to experience and welcome the return of my favourite element - it is essentially a love letter to rain. I don't have much experience with water colour, but I wanted the painting/self portrait to convey some sense of the peace, and submission to something far more elemental and powerful, that I feel with my 'head back, eyes closed' in the rain.

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I am a queer writer based in London. I love the colour blue and find peace in water, books, and queer and creative spaces!

 

Lucie Arnoux @luciedrawsthings

Improvisations

This series of illustrations has been entirely improvised. Without a sketch or a starting idea, I start doodling and follow where the line takes me. I found it to be a great meditative exercise, which often brings me insight into my mood and needs of the moment. Most images tend to be of peaceful, calming characters. Their strength helps me anchor myself in the moment, and reconnect with my emotions. Intricate patterns on fabrics are a common feature of these illustrations. They act as a 3d, folding Mandala.

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Lucie (she/her) is a painter and comic-book writer from Marseille. She is the author of the Enola Holmes comics, and her autobiographical graphic novel Je Ne Sais Quoi. She is one of t'ART's editors, and has been a contributor to all things t'ART.

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Maisie Stilwell-Garrett @attention.skr

Series: Blurred and Fluid.

Canvas 1: Foot fetish, canvas 2: Whack Walk & canvas 3: Blurred and Fluid

These works are a reflection of all the busy, weird and intrusive thoughts going on in my brain. Each individual piece is full of colour and patterns and small details and feels like a snapshot of the inside of my head. When comparing the three they all seem quite different, like peoples thoughts from one second to the next. But they also all contain similarities in their intense and busy backgrounds. The business reflects the constant stream of thoughts flowing through the mind, whilst the bold more simple outlines of the creatures represent the current thought in that moment. I wanted it to be hard to focus in one thing, I want you to look everywhere and at all of it at once, as if you're inside my mind.

Foot fetish: About exactly that, a foot fetish. An androgynous demon-like character and the dark background symbolise how queer people are often perceived. Being hyper-sexualised or fetishized by others is normal for a lot of queer people, its often the only time people want to interact with us and so I resorted to doing it to myself to feel wanted or seen. Queer people and even the way we're interacted with is often demonised, i've often been made to feel like a dirty fetish that should be hidden. Foot Fetish is a blunt, on the nose commentary of what its like to have to bare the most intimate parts of yourself to the world to be accepted.

Whack walk: Having a busy brain can often feel like the embodiment of the phrase "Running around like a headless chicken". All the colours and patterns are deliberately busy and overlapping to recreate this feeling of panic. The morbid headless figures represent what its like to feel being outside of your body in these moments.

Blurred and Fluid: Blurred lines, multiple faces, androgynous features. A visual representation of what its like to be non-binary and to feel the constant fluctuations between feeling masc and femme or both or neither all at once.

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I'm a non-binary, neurodiverse mixed media artist living in East London. I love colour and texture, which often shows in my final creations. I feel lucky that art has been a kind of therapy for my busy mind, it allows me to clear my thoughts in a way nothing else has.

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Meredith Ford @p.u.s.s.y_p.o.t.s

PUSSYPOTS

PUSSYPOTS are hand thrown ceramic bowls with a vulva at the centre – all unique, just like the bodies that inspire them. By representing the true diversity of vulva, they aim to support body positivity and combat stigma and shame around female sexuality and anatomy. I also create custom pots for customers based on photographs of their vulva - it's a privilege to be part of an intimate expression of self-acceptance or celebration.

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I am a Hackney-based feminist potter! I've been potting relentlessly for 5 years, and adore using my art to contribute to a gorgeous conversation about body inclusivity and sexual freedom.

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Nat Li Lin Steinhouse @ratsaladratsalad and Maria Kontouli @riiaprnt

Compass

Compass was conceived in response to an article written by Mireya Vazquez Prada, about a protein in birds’ eyes that allows them to navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. How else are we pulled around, guided by attraction? Why do we get visions, hear echoes of sounds we haven’t heard, know people we haven’t met?

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Nat Li Lin Steinhouse (words, sound, story, editing) devises performances, often using movement and sound. They like feeling for magic that breathes, flows and ripples through the colonial capitalist ‘reality’. They often use words and they often hate words. They release music under the name Rat Salad.

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Maria Kontouli (visuals) is a Greek-Cypriot performance artist, painter and maker who, through experimental movement, spoken and written text, and use of a loop station, explores the duality of body and spirit, the Self and our collective unconsciousness by embodying myth and symbolism in series of live performances and artworks.

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Rae Smith @cult_of_rae

Tempest A

This piece is part of a series exploring intersections between neurodivergence, queerness and identity - with specific reference to gender queer experiences with adhd and ocd isolation, delayed processing and connection disability

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I'm an intersex, trans, non binary artist and activist working across multiple disciplines.

 

My work attempts to connect with and put out into the world those underlying primal images and sounds which allow us to transcend barriers such as language, sex, culture, neurodiversity and mental health. Through painting, music, spoken word, activism and events curation, I provide a route to a more inclusive and explorative future.

 

Rhiannon Griffin @rhiannongriffin.art

I Feel Too Many Things

This triptych comes from overthinking, disorganised thoughts and a constant sense of shifting identities. Like I am too much and I am nothing. My work is inspired by my struggle with mental illness and my autistic brain. As my sense of identity shifts I become nothing so I attempt to capture these fleeting moments in paint. Using colour and layered images I try to show the chaos that I feel inside. I paint self portraits to feel that I am real.

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I'm a queer, autistic artist living with a chaotic brain. I use mixed media to navigate my thoughts and cope with existing.

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Rosa Kusabbi @rosa_illustration

Sailor Jenny

The work Sailor Jenny subverts the typical Sailor Jerry tattoos by transforming them into a collection of people who are queer, disabled, plus size, trans, sexually liberated and also reimagines the typical iconography with images of protest, riot and same sex love. Tattoos are about affirming your identity and as a queer person my identity has often been up for debate. This project is not only about taking back identity but also turning the tables and finding community within spaces that we’ve often never seen ourselves before.

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Rosa Kusabbi is an illustrator who specialises in print making, who’s work centres around expressing queer joy, pride and protest. Her work often holds a social message from climate justice to wealth inequality and is all tied together with bright neon colours and a punky spirit!

 

Ru @badgrl.ruru

Watch Me Grow, See Me Bloom

This piece is about body hair. Myself and various important people in my life have struggled with complexes around body hair. This piece represents saying fuck you to those body standards and blooming as the natural goddess you are.

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I'm a sex positive body positive artist creating artwork which sends a message to protest against the objectification of women in favouring celebration of of sexual liberation and the conceptualisation of bodies as ART forms !!

 

Shannon O’Leary @Shannolearyphotography

This series of work is about my self empowerment, it was a series inspired by being knocked down by men whilst trying to uplift myself and explore female empowerment.

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I am a fashion and portrait photographer, I am a pansexual photographer who loves to specialise on self portraiture

 

Sophie Abramovici

Hope in the morning

This series shows pictures of Hope taken early one morning. They capture a slow mood of not needing to go anywhere or do anything. She looks beautiful and confident in her queer body.

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Queer filmmaker and photographer. I'm half english, half french and grew up in Italy. My work has a focus on documenting the world around me, with a focus on the struggles, resistances, and joy intersecting groups of society face and produce everyday.

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Teresa Bessa @she_noise

The Sun Is a Black Dot

'The Sun is A Black Dot', 2022 A video art piece that reflects on the transformation of the physical urban space: The city on a post pandemic world, how it impacts bodies and our relation to them. Most precisely how queer bodies can be the first to suffer from isolation or alienation in the organization of space and society. Seeking to create dialogue through documentary footage of the city of Porto shot between 2021-2022 and a cut-up poem created by the artist referencing ‘Electronic Revolution’ by William Burroughs. The editing room is the main working stage for the artist as the accompanying sound composition and digital manipulation of the image play a central role in generating new symbols that complement the narrative proposed by the piece.

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Teresa Bessa, currently based in Porto, is a multidisciplinary artist with a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts by the Faculty of Fine Arts University of Porto. Through her artistic practice she seeks to reflect on identity, queer, feminist issues working across mediums such as video, photography, painting and text.

 

Toraigh Watson @toraighw

Her Land

'Her Land' explores idealised environments through music and audio clips of verbal descriptions, with a focus on female/femme voices from different age groups. The voices which are currently heard on the track are those of my family and close friends. I plan to develop this by collecting audio clips that provide a wider representation of female/femme/nb identifying voices. This piece of experimental music was born out of two things: firstly, lockdown where we were confined to our local and domestic spaces for the larger part of two years and often idealised the notion of being elsewhere. Secondly, an audiovisual collaboration as part of ‘The Monstrous Femmes’ duo, which I make one half of, where in 2021 we explored the idea of idealised ‘otherworlds’ through a surreal feminist lens.

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I’m an audio-visual artist and musician from Ireland. My work blends inspiration from Irish traditional music, electronic music and visual art. Sound is a visceral part of everyday life and is inextricably linked to our sense of home and belonging as well as detachment and anxiety. By combining my traditional instrument with contemporary music production and abstract sounds my work is an auditory manifestation of my attachment to home and sense of Irish identity, whilst also finding a home and place for myself away from home as a young queer woman.