This article is part of Hyperallergic‘s Pride Month Seriesfeaturing an interview with a different emerging or mid-career transgender or non-binary artist each weekday throughout June.
Fadescha is a non-binary artist and curator who lives and works between Berlin and New Delhi. Their multimedia practice is centered on performance, photography and film. For the fourth episode of our June interview series, Fadescha spoke with Hyperallergic on their recent video works, cultivating “radically exclusive” spaces, and their New Delhi-based art and social space Party Office, which made their way to Documenta 15 this year.
Hyperallergic: What is the current orientation of your artistic practice?
Fadescha: I am currently focusing on my personal experience with neurodivergence, cPTSD [complex post-traumatic stress disorder], chronic pain and fatigue, and finding meaningful socio-cultural orientations that are not alienating. My three-channel video “Burn All The Books That Call You The Unknown” (2020) highlights body movement as an archive of multi-generational trauma, and suggests it is first-person sharing and visibility of plural experiences through a shared language. (of sound) that we can challenge the archives of white supremacy. My work not only critiques hetero-patriarchal social composition, but also provides intimate spaces where those who align can enjoy themselves together. I pose our body as the place where to center its pleasure: It is in this act that we take back our power, as Blacks, Blacks, Browns, Indigenous, refugees, handicapped, neurodivergent people; as women, transgender and transgender people. My video”Nesting in Rapid Floods: Qworkaholics Anonymous II(2022) features collectively generated choreography celebrating safer (“doing nothing”) times with friends, who also do the relentless work for queer survival outside of the intentional scene of intimacy set for the video. . Alongside my artistic practice, I run Party Office, an anti-caste, anti-racist, trans-feminist artistic and social space. In 2022, we released five publications and hosted a dungeon with QTBIPOC exclusive pro-BDSM club nights at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany.
H: In what ways, if any, does your gender identity play a role in your experience as an artist?
I’ve always been a non-conformist when it comes to my gender. I think queer dysphoria doesn’t just come from gender or sexuality, but also shows through other social structures that you are part of. In my experience, caste, race, class, and neurodivergence also played a big role in me not feeling like I belonged where I was and with whom I was. That hasn’t changed: transforming and then exiting is an ongoing process.
I think that my personal experience of loneliness and the constant search for a place to belong guides my practice a lot. My video series Qworkaholics Anonymous (2021-present) reinvents the format of drug rehabilitation programs to create space for “doing nothing,” arguing that radical personalities (queer, trans, and BIPOC people) do important work in their very acts of survival. With gender, I am not just interested in a person, but also in institutions and questioning their gendered organizational ethics and practice.
H: Which artists inspire your work today? What are your other sources of inspiration?
F: I love gatherings and radically exclusive spaces that are owned and/or managed by QTBIPOC. I think nightlife has allowed many queer, trans, black, and neurodivergent artists to be visible, to work, to earn a living, and to hang out. I also appreciate the practice and work of many feminists who find and share methods of collective healing. I am always inspired by my friends and the people I invite to work with me. Shaunak Mahbubani, my collaborator (and fellow Aries) curator-writer, has been tremendously supportive and their ways of working have challenged and inspired me. Black Quantum Futurism, rungrupa, Estelle Ellison, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Wakaliwood, Theaster Gates, House of Slé, Jyotsna Siddharth, Tania Bruguera and Another Roadmap Africa Cluster are among those whose work I value.
H: What are your hopes for the LGBTQIA+ community right now?
F: I hope to arrive collectively at a party where we have no doubts, no shame; a space of curiosity and compatible values towards mutual pleasure.
