Your Body Changes Everything
The Finnish Museum of Photography 22.4.–27.8.2023
Your Body Changes Everything, presenting works from three artists, Roza Ahmad, Coyote Park, and Iida Valmé, is an exhibition about the relationship between contemporary photography and trans and queer identities. It talks about the joys of shared resistance, and about how living trans and queer lives becomes possible through stories that are told of them.
For marginalised identities, images of others who share our experiences can enable us to find ourselves, and to realise that we do exist - and have always existed – as pluralities. At best, they show us that different kinds of lives and bodies can be nourished, loved, and celebrated.
Today, cultural shifts and social media platforms have made it possible to share images of diverse experiences that are pushed to societies’ margins. This has granted access to stories about more than just the difficult parts of living trans and queer lives.
The works of Ahmad, Park and Valmé talk about trans and queer flourishing, nurtured by its surrounding communities. Continuing to exist in the world despite the structures that try to make it impossible can alone create radical change.
The exhibition is curated by Orlan Ohtonen from The Finnish Museum of Photography.
Deep in Vogue
Kunsthal, Rotterdam 18.9.2021-13.3.2022
The exhibition celebrates ballroom culture and provides the context for a subculture that is shaped by and for black and brown queer and trans people. The origins of ballroom culture can be traced back to the New York underground scene of the 1970s. It was first brought to the attention of the general public with the launch of Madonna’s music video ‘Vogue’ in 1990, the same year in which the documentary ‘Paris Is Burning’ premiered. Over the past years, ballroom has returned to mainstream attention, for instance due to the television series Pose, and ballroom events at major festivals around the world. Through photography, video installations, and a number of fashion items, the exhibition Deep in Vogue. Celebrating Ballroom Culture showcases the community, codes, and expressive power of ballroom – focusing on its roots and the continuing need to celebrate each other in a society that so often fails to do so.
The exhibition focuses on the most important aspects of ballroom culture, from the 1980s up until now. Roza Ahmad was selected to showcase 7 portraits from her own collection from 2018-2020.
The exhibition is curated by David Snels from Kunsthal, Rotterdam.
Elements of Vogue
9.6.–26.6.2020 Culture centre Caisa, Helsinki
Ballroom-culture has initiated and expanded as a movement within New York’s BIPOC-/queer communities, and principally illustrates a self-expressive fusion of movement & fashion. In compliance with its name, it has attracted influences from Vogue -fashion journal as well as from genres of dance & acrobatics. It has functioned and keeps functioning today as a beneficial platform for sexual & gender identities, and most importantly offers a safe space in particular to those parts of queer communities of afro-american & latin origins.
In recent years, Roza Ahmad has documented the European based voguing-community. As a key function to the exhibition is to manifest various shapes & forms of queer. Roza wants to establish recognition to body-marginalisations & break the media portrayal of beauty standards & by this exhibit the voguing-culture with new perspectives to popular audiences. Brown & cultural diversity is also a key component to the exhibition’s overall theme.
The Exhibition was organized in Co-operation together with URB-Festival, Kiasma Museum and Cultural Centre Caisa.
