#habitacionrosaexposicion

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On Death

The exit from this labyrinth is an unsweet death, almost like falling suddenly into the void, after a long wandering that leaves a feeling of exhaustion and numbness at the same time. Coming out of the closet seems liberating, but in the end it is just a mirage or an oasis.

But not all those who wander are lost. This wandering on death row or that walking on a tightrope, as the tightrope walker does, augurs a hopeful death that will give way to eir resurrection.

During adolescence I found refuge in the music of the group Anthony and The Johnsons. I did not understand exactly what she was saying or why I felt attracted to the stories that her songs told, until I recognized the story of her experience as a transgender person.

I’m a bird girl 

I’m a bird girl 

I’m a bird girl 

I’m a bird girl now

I’ve got my heart 

Here in my hands 

I’ve got my heart 

Here in my hands now 

I’ve been searching 

For my wings some time 

I’m gonna be born 

I’m gonna be born 

Into soon the sky 

Into soon the sky 

‘Cause I’m a bird girl 

And the bird girls go to heaven 

I’m a bird girl 

And the bird girls can fly 

Bird girls can fly

Bird girls can fly

Bird girls can fly

Anohni, 2005. I’m a Bird Now.

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Pink Room the exhibition at El Roser, supported by Ajuntament de Ciutadella and Consell Insular de Menorca and produced by D Loves The Sodomites Studio.

Images by the autonomical tv channel IB3 from the Balearic Islands.

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Biography

D Loves The Sodomites is a transdisciplinary artist born in Minorca (1990) graduated in Fine Arts (UB) and Master in Art Education (UCM). E has lived and studied in cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, London, Paris and New York.

Eir work has been shown in theaters and festivals throughout Europe, such as Francesc Català-Roca Space (Barcelona, 2013); Revela-T Festival (Barcelona, 2014); Analogmania (Romania, 2015); Analogue Festival (London, 2015); at Rissaga New Wave Of Minorcan Artists at El Roser (Menorca, 2015); Miró Foundation (Mallorca, 2017); Nau Bostik (Barcelona, 2016); at the exhibition Refinement Begginings curated by El Palomar at Casal Solleric (Mallorca, 2018); at Where Does Reality Resides? at Es Baluard (Mallorca, 2019); e was interviewed in the book A Tiro de Piedra: Acercar lo Posible, edited by Es Baluard (Mallorca, 2019); e was a finalist twice at The Young Arts Contest of the Balearic Islands; e has been awarded with research and creation grants from Consell Insular de Menorca, Institut d’Estudis Balearics, Macba’s Study Centre (CED), Nau Estruch, Eima, Gamba Z’AIR, Harvestworks, etc.

At the beggining of 2021 e released digitally and physically a visual album with the same title as the shows, a project that has started to be toured in the form of a performance-concert at Sons de Nit Festival in Palma, at the Pride of Alaior, at Festival Emergències, etc.

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Pink Room

Pink Room is an anthological and retrospective exhibition that shows the work of the last ten years of production of D Loves The Sodomites, by following a circular itinerary based on Campbell’s Monomite. The show immerses us and guides us along the artist’s phases during eir life journey, through performance, analog photography, video, sound and writings.

This project represents and dissects the process, from denial to acceptance, faced by the subject during the construction of oneself identity, as a result of a long journey of introspection and self-knowledge. Thus, it deconstructs and subverts, in its essence, the conception and the binary representation of gender and sexuality, in the middle of a patriarchal system. 

It also highlights the importance of being born in an island like Menorca and growing as a dissident individual, by considering the small dimensions of the island, the isolation and the fact of being surrounded by water and nature.

Pink Room pretends to undermine the concept of power as a principle of male domination, by questioning the imagery of femininity that patriarchy has built and imposed on every being that does not respond to its canons and rules. It also set into question and reflects upon the binary representation and conception of gender and sexuality as a tool of hierarchization and segregation.

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Pink Room poster and booklet. Written by D Loves The Sodomites and edited by Ajuntament de Ciutadella, 2021.

November 15th - January 5th of 2022.

Exhibition at El Roser, supported by Ajuntament de Ciutadella and Consell Insular de Menorca and produced by D Loves The Sodomites Studio.

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Pink Room. The Journey of the Antihero book. Written by D Loves The Sodomites and edited by Ajuntament de Maó, 2022.

April 16th - May 21th of 2022.

Exhibition at Sala Sant Antoni, supported by Ajuntament de Maó and Consell Insular de Menorca and produced by D Loves The Sodomites Studio.

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PINK ROOM. The journey of the antihero.

HABITACIÓ ROSA. El viatge de l’antiheroi.

HABITACIÓN ROSA. El viaje del antihéroe.

CHAMBRE ROSE. Le voyage de l’antihéros.

Education Program organized by Tomeu Sánchez, Silvia Deyta from Transverxia Menorca and Elo Nàger from Ses Foneres.

Speakers: Elo Nàger, Clara Martínez, Vicent Lozáno and D Loves The Sodomites.

April 16th - May 21th of 2022.

Exhibition at Sala Sant Antoni, supported by Ajuntament de Maó and Consell Insular de Menorca and produced by D Loves The Sodomites Studio.

Special thanks to Escola d’Art de Menorca.

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PINK ROOM. The journey of the antihero.

HABITACIÓ ROSA. El viatge de l’antiheroi.

HABITACIÓN ROSA. El viaje del antihéroe.

CHAMBRE ROSE. Le voyage de l’antihéros.

Education Program organized by Tomeu Sánchez, Silvia Deyta from Transverxia Menorca and Elo Nàger from Ses Foneres. 

Speakers: Elo Nàger, Clara Martínez, Vicent Lozáno and D Loves The Sodomites.

April 16th - May 21th of 2022. 

Exhibition at Sala Sant Antoni, supported by Ajuntament de Maó and Consell Insular de Menorca and produced by D Loves The Sodomites Studio.

Special thanks to Escola d’Art de Menorca.

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Title: Untitled (pink neon triangle)

Year: 2015

Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 120 cm

Medium: Pink neon triangle installation

The pink triangle is the symbol that was used during Nazism to identify homosexuals and prostitutes in concentration camps. It has become an identity and empowering symbol of the collective, like so many other expressions that the patriarchy still uses in a vexatious way towards us.

This piece was used for the first time in the Venus performance that took place within the context of the exhibition. Rissaga. New Wave of Minorcan Artists (Ciutadella, 2015) and was exhibited in an unpremeditated way in El Roser, as if it were an installation.

The Pink Neon Triangle confronts the power structures that oppress and persecute the community, such as Nazism or Catholicism, as for example through the symbol of the trinity. By using the lights of the night, this work fills the space with an overwhelming, chimerical and hypnotic atmosphere, which shows spirituality and intellectuality as something subjective, that has nothing to do with dogmas and religions.

The picture was taken during the performance Venus programmed in the activities program of Rissaga. New Wave of Minorcan Artists curated by Daniel Amorós at El Roser (Ciutadella).

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On Repression

Every process of introspection is preceded by an immersion in unknown waters. A dive that is never easy. It can be even tortuous and extremely painful, especially when we do not see light in the direction we are going.

For a queer or dissident individual, referring to gender and sexual identity, who is unaware of the murky sea that is patriarchy and who has to confront this system in order to survive, this sinking is violent and hostile.

In the first stage of a person’s self-knowledge appear all kinds of thoughts that come from the symbolic or explicit violence (verbal or physical) they receive from their environment. These can lead to self-hatred, self-harm, or even suicide.

Despite the fact that many people in the LGTBQ+ already enjoy a healthy experience and environment, we still need an accompaniment based on conscious education: affection, empathy and active listening.

Today, when there is something that frightens me, from which I flee, I return to the words of Bauçà:

He was not invited to life.

He always had to hide,

cover his face.

Only a stain of blood remained from him

very fresh, a brand new sex

and tired, dusty wings

Miquel Bauçà. A Beautiful Story (Una Bella Història), 1962.

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Title: Postmortem Portraits Series

Author: Daniel Amorós / Daniel Loves The Sodomites

Year: 2012-13

Measures: 20 x 25 cm

Dimension: Gelatin silver prints

Location: Barcelona

POSTMORTEM PORTRAITS

From my personal experience with death, I started to do research on the mark that the end of  life left on my memories. I immersed myself in the imaginary of postmortem photography in which I intended to discover the interstices of “the last breath” and “the mask of death”. By using a black veil I tried to make the last memory eternal: the face of the people I photographed as if they were the ones I lost, as if it was done in the XIX century with the death masks.

What I assumed in the past as a research of “what remains” of those who were not around me anymore and the wound that their “last breath” marked in my consciousness was really my own death row, a metaphorical and transitory death that witnessed the denial process I was going through as a queer person.

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On Denial

Little by little one becomes aware that there is something within oneself and in the environment in conflict, and that the place one occupies is, at least, the margins:

Denial demands the most intense of beliefs, a belief that surpasses all myths and all fables, all ideologies and all emotions. The moral site brings us closer to death but also distances us from it. The paradox or contradiction contained in a life experienced as negation rests precisely on the reason that avoids or postpones its final decision – the rejection of the inevitability of the irreductible logical belief of a subject who denies himself.

David Nebreda, 2006. Sur la Révelation.

Fear becomes manifest in front of the heteronormative modus vivendi and the stereotyped identities that the system imposes on us. That is when a certain rejection occurs and a certain denial is generated towards what we need or want, because they teach us that it is poorly done. One a priori rejects the call to adventure, which generates a deep state of loss, and which is accentuated by social pressures.

But who is predisposed to live submerged in lies? One can get out of this loss on ones own, although it is always more pleasant and, sometimes, necessary to venture on this journey in company.

Uncertainty and ignorance in the end revert and become a supernatural power, which is the thirst for knowledge, and leads us to overcome a series of distractions and temptations, challenges in general. This is how learning occurs and a process of change, evolution and metamorphosis begins.

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Title: Ruins 

Year: 2013

Author: Daniel Amorós / D Loves The Sodomites 

Measures: 30 x 40 cm

Medium: Gelatin silver prints

Location: Barcelona and Menorca

RUINS

The body is the ruin of our vital experience, the surface where our experience is written and the witness of every step we make during our journey. Death is inevitable and the body makes visible the decay of the human being, as the ruin does with the building.

A body with an absent gaze becomes the object of the passage of time, thus, it assumes the form of dust in the same way that his environment does. The performer gets lost in the memories and become an object of the decayed place.

Every photograph was made by two images: the self-portraits for which I painted myself in white like if I was a Butoh dancer and the pictures of my grandmother’s house in ruins. This series are analogue photomontages that were made by using a manually emulsified watercolor paper.

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Title: Danse Macabre 

Author: Daniel Amorós / D Loves The Sodomites 

Year: 2013 

Dimension: 30 x 30 cm

Medium: gelatin silver prints

Location: Barcelona

DANSE MACABRE

Recorded site-specific performance in Abney Park Cemetry (London). This project was done in the context of an exchange university program, between University of Barcelona and Middlesex University (London) as a result of my final’s Fine Arts Degree project.

Danse Macabre depicts the death of my own existence, by witnessing the culmination of denial process faced by a queer individual during the acceptance of its own identity. This metaphorical death opens the way to acceptance of your real self. Thus this site-specific performance and this experimental danse over a tombstone becomes a transitory, liberating, romantic and metamorphic death preceded by an experimental dance.

This photos are not the registration of a performance. I took pictures of the relationship between my body and that place. I moved my body experimentally along that platform, that I understood as my stage.

By performance, I don’t mean life art, but we can’t deny that photography is a performative medium. One picture after another play a macabre dance as if they were film stills.

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Title: Danse Macabre

Author: Daniel Amorós / Daniel Loves The Sodomites

Any: 2017

Performer: Daniel Amorós / Daniel Loves The Sodomites

Videographer: Laura Ribatallada

Medium: Vídeo (mono) i performance

Duration: 07’44”

Location: Abney Park Cemetry

Recorded site-specific performance in Abney Park Cemetry (London). This project was done in the context of an exchange university program, between University of Barcelona and Middlesex University (London) as a result of my final’s Fine Arts Degree project.

Danse Macabre depicts the death of my own existence, by witnessing the culmination of denial process faced by a queer individual during the acceptance of its own identity. This metaphorical death opens the way to acceptance of your real self. Thus this site-specific performance and this experimental danse over a tombstone becomes a transitory, liberating, romantic and metamorphic death preceded by an experimental dance.

This photos are not the registration of a performance. I took pictures of the relationship between my body and that place. I moved my body experimentally along that platform, that I understood as my stage.

By performance, I don’t mean life art, but we can’t deny that photography is a performative medium. One picture after another play a macabre dance as if they were film stills.

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Title: Ofèlia

Author: Daniel Amorós / Daniel Loves The Sodomites

Year: 2017

Performer: Daniel Amorós / Daniel Loves The Sodomites

Videographer: Carlos Torrico

Dimensions: variable

Medium: vídeo digital (monocanal) i performance in situ

Duraction: 11’53’’

Location: s’Avenc de Son Pou, Mallorca

Inside the majestic cathedral cave of S’Avenc de Son Pou, the figure of a being can be seen dancing in spirals, dressed in a white dress honoring Loïe Fuller and making reference to the wedding dress.

This performance was made in the context of a residency at Miro’s Foundation in Mallorca and unearths the history behind S’Avenc de Son Pou and the Escola Mallorquina, by taking as a starting point the lyrics of The Song of Life that we are written inside of the cave: “Come single woman, come. Drink the water of life, that the old song says, whoever drinks quickly marries ”.

Ophelia is understood as symbol of romantic love in our culture, it becomes a site-specific performance embodied by a queer individual, forced to assume the paradigm of femininity. This performance undermines the principle of male domination as a form of power, over the ideology of femininity that patriarchy has built. Likewise, it annihilates the needs that the male system imposes on this female figure, pushed to find fulfillment in its opposite, that is, in the dual relationship model that its dogma raises.

On the contrary, the performance resignifies the idea of ​​affective relationships based on the pillars of domination and submission, from the power of the subject over his own existence, as a possible path to fullness, harmony, liberation, empowerment , etc.