‘Dog Monster (BESTA)’ and ‘Contract’ (Signed by Satanas, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Elimi, Leviathan, Astaroth and others)’ are an invitation to engage with queer sex utopias and an opportunity to question and expand on them. Focussing on cruising grounds as a queer space, the works aim to further queer futurity by bringing together elements of the occult, divination and personal trauma.
‘Dog Monster (BESTA)’ is a creature that lurks in the dark and pulses with light to attract participants. It alludes to ‘whoring’ and the ‘slut’ as utopian practices as the creature repeatedly gets entered by strangers and makes us think about the hands that ‘fisted’ BESTA before us. Thus the artwork is also transported into the realm of queer monstruosity, disrupting categories and space. Participants ‘fist’ a monster and thus become monstrous – and queer – by appendage.
‘Dog Monster (BESTA)’ is an analogue divinatory machine from inside which a participant can pull out a card of an object found in a cruising space for pondering upon.
‘Contract’ (Signed by Satanas, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Elimi, Leviathan, Astaroth and others)’ is a textile based piece of work that aims to connect and find parallels between personal trauma, cruising grounds and moments of historical queer defiance. Based on a 1635 alleged pact signed between French priest Urbain Grandier and several demonic entities and court evidence against alleged witch Elizabeth Clarke, the work maps temporal spaces where contracts, trauma and sex are negotiated.
Diogo Duarte (he/him/they/them), b. 1987, is an Edinburgh-based, Portuguese artist with a specific interest in queer issues. With a background in mental health, his mixed media practice explores themes of queerness, queer futurity, queer utopias, intimacy, sex, identity and mental health. He’s recently published an art book with GOST Books entitled ’Sour-Puss: The Opera’ where he collaborates with sister artist Jessica Mitchell on issues of melancholia, belonging and otherness. He’s currently finishing his Mlitt in Fine Art Practice at the Glasgow School of Art (2022).
