Queer Land(s)
by Simon Olmetti

This exhibition stems from three years of practice-based research for a PhD in Fine Arts, focusing on the intersection between Land art, Queer Spirit and neo-materialism. It consists of five videos and a creative writing piece/poem attempting to disrupt (hetero)normative idea(l)s of (being in) nature, together with unsettling historical art practices such as Land art.

Using a neo-materialist perspective built upon theorists including José E. Muñoz, Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, nature becomes vital and vibrant matter, its particles are all constantly reconfiguring/reconstructing/affecting one another, always in flux and becoming-with, in constant “trans-formation”. Nature is indeed intrinsically queer. At the same time, queering becomes a spiritual process unveiling its inherent making-kin properties, joining every thing there is in multispecies modalities. We are always all connected, humans and more-than-humans, in unpredictable and multiple ways.

Using video and creative writing makes queering a space for speculative world-making, a process to re-imagine and re-think our relationship with nature and the other(s), human and more-than-human, ultimately reclaiming the land for queer visions and new ways of being together.

“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with” (Haraway, D.J., 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, pg. 12).

For more inforamation about the artist visit HERE