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Queer history gaps we’ve never seen

By Contact

Monday, February 25th, 2019
Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz
Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz. Photo: Graziella Loyrette

You’ve never seen the lonely me at all is a search of queer life stories in Central and Eastern Europe. It’s intimate and personal both as separate works and as a collective gathering of knowledge of life- and survivalstyles.


Art exhibition
You’ve never seen the lonely me at all with Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Anna Daučíková, Mi Kafchin, Mária Takács, Mima Simić and Marta Šušak, Ines Lukač, Teri Szűcs and Maja Pan, Valentina Iancu.

Curator: Simona Dumitriu
Venue: Skånes Konstförening.
Exhibition date: February 1 – March 3 2019

I get to choose if I want to take my shoes of or use plastic covers. What would my shoes look like in plastic covers I wonder. And of course my answer is always to be barefoot when I get the opportunity. I’m entering the video work Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz with performer Aérea Negrot

In the white textile covered room I’m embraced with powerful will to express a beautiful resistance I couldn’t feel in the Malmö streets earlier today. Sitting here in my not-that-glamorous winter jacket I feel under-dressed. Longing for sequins in the summer streets. Soft white fabric under my feet, I want to roll around in there. Those benches are made not to be seated on I think.

After the long intro in the video, I love long silent intros, when she starts singing and the beat comes on I’m already seated on the floor. I release my jacket. Can I stay for the whole day? It’s soft refreshing and warm. Remember how I yesterday thought about how it was a long time since i experienced art that I really enjoyed. I’m alone in here. And this experience is for me. This is why art became my sort of non-political politics, non-religious religion. I wish I could come here for relaxation every day. Being able to believe in abilities to protest against everything evil and boring through singing to yourself with headphones on the streets.

A glamorous non-glamorous intro
A glamorous non-glamorous intro. Silent by Pauline Boudry and Renare Lorentz. Photo: Graziella Loyrette

The video loop is annoying me a little, why couldn’t it just last forever in some way? But I guess then you would lose that impressing moment of a glamorous non-glamorous intro when the white wall falls down behind you and you find yourself standing on a non-stage street stage.

Drawings by Mi Kafchin
Drawings by Mi Kafchin. Photo: Graziella Loyrette

Reproduced drawings by Mi Kafchin on the walls. I couldn’t handle the manual slide projector. Theres people who know how this works, people existed in times before my time. Documentary Secret Years directed by Mária Takács, 2009, healing history gaps about queer people in East and central Europe. And a glimpse of beautiful images from the video Portrait of a Woman with Institution by Anna Anna Daučíková presented in a small institutional two person office chair room.


About Graziella Loyrette

Influential Art Critic writing for Gallery Extra Magazine, Sun Times News and Gallery Extra TV.