Darkrooms: retracing childhood memories (exhibition)

Within gay culture, darkrooms are highly sexual spaces that are exclusively used for cruising and anonymous sex. It is a labyrinth of men, where you move through the maze, feeling different bodies. Performing. Grinding. Submitting. Through thoughts, conversations and a reflective process, the presented body of images, text, and video/audio sculptures by Abdullah Qureshi explore personal histories, trauma and childhood – in particular, looking at questions of sexuality through the lens of queer bodies of colour.

The autobiography has been a prominent thread in Qureshi’s practice, which in the past has looked at sexual abuse through visual metaphors such as interior objects. Taking that forward, the current work grapples with the issue much more directly, juxtaposing floor plans that are marked with sexual memories for the artist and erotic characters that translate triggering experiences of being in darkrooms. In addition, expanding on a recent paper, titled ‘Queer Migrations: the case of an LGBT Café / Queers without Border’ (Published in Feminism and Queer in Art Education, 2018), the exhibition also features the voice of an Iraqi gay man recounting memories of his homeland and subsequent outing.

Exhibition duration: 21 - 27 June 2018.