“his wings to touch the skies”

exhibited at Šopa Gallery in the group exhibition “Hope is not Desire” curated by xtro realm
On view between 8. 7. - 27. 8. 2022

Gideon Horváth’s installation is inspired by queer ecology, which, as Catriona Sandilands puts it is "an interdisciplinary constellation of practices that aim, in different ways, to disrupt prevailing heterosexist discursive and institutional articulations of sexuality and nature, and also to reimagine evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and environmental politics in light of queer theory."

We portray nature being extroverted, able-bodied, virile, aggressively healthy and heterosexual. In reality all living things on our planet are rather queer. Most of the plants are hermaphrodites, making both pollen and seeds, pollinated by the help of animals, like bees. Large part of the animals are hermaphrodites or intersexual too, it is a highly successful way of surviving for them. Even so, the master-narrative of most theories of evolution is heterosexist, centered around reproductive sexual penetration. When it comes to nonreproductive sexual behaviour, it has been linked to hierarchical systems, not in terms of pleasure but as signals of dominance and submission

Using queer symbols and the two chains reaching upwards, Gideon Horváth depicts the contradiction between the anthropocentric and heterosexist way of presenting evolution and the long neglected queer phenomenas that disrupt this doomed view. The material of beeswax is also linked to these themes, Horváth uses it because according to him it has much queer qualities: it is sensitive, it can take on many shapes to adapt but it is also highly resilient, just like oppressed queer communities.

photos: Tatiana Takacova