2022: The *Bubble

Launched by Unheilbar Heidelberg and Disco Zwei, Mannheim

In April of 2022 QuArtEer-Collective had the privilege of organizing one month of program for The Bubble, a temporary queer art space hosted in a former institute of psychoanalysis in Heidelberg. Under the theme Memento Disco, we brought visual and performance art into a vibrant space of community and connection for one month.

The program featured a variety of events, including a performance, a makeup workshop , and a streaming of the Online Drag Contest (4th edition), a project I co-founded with Patricia Piccante during the pandemic. Over the course of five shows on Twitch, we brought together drag artists from Europe, the US, and beyond, inspired by the drama, euphoria and tension of the Eurovision Song Contest.

I also hosted a talk on "chromophobia," a personal investigation into the subtle devaluation of color as "emotional" in contrast to the rationality ascribed to line and form in European art history. Watch the talk here.

For the exhibition component, I created be.longing, a light installation combined with paintings. The space was lit by motion-sensitive lights and a mix of warm and fluorescent tones. The installation aimed to explore the existence of color in physical, psychological, and philosophical spaces. Through the distorted lighting, I sought to highlight the subjectivity of color and time perception - particularly in the context of queerness, based on a theory that growing up queer unfolds on a different timescale than in a heteronormative context.

The month-long program fostered a space where people from various backgrounds met, connected, and shared in a communal and liberating environment.