queering ~ costume

June-Sept 2022
Mixed media installation

@ Sonntags Club, Berlin

Where bodies and garments meet, a new relationship with space begins. Queering the cis-normative gaze, the costume work occupies the space between garment and sculpture, outside the gender binary. The site-specific exhibition queering ~ costume works as an attempt to turn Sonntags Club into an installation where the boundaries between space, costume and audience are blurred.

ECTORIDERS

2022
Costume collab w/ Tin Wang

Direction: Milena Bühring, Lisa Kaschubat, Klara Kirsch
Makeup: Paulina Mondello
Scenography: Louis Caspar Schmitt

@ fff-filmproductions, Berlin

THE CUTEST CRITICISM
A LOOP

2021
Performative Installation w/ costume
Collab w/ Katinka Pyritidis, Raica Wackes

@ Napoleon Komplex Gallery, Berlin

Curated by Constantin Hartenstein, Jimmy Robert

“We are queer because we refuse to take a fixed form.” (Antke Engel). The costume is entirely handmade, thematizing the process of production. Hand-knitted pieces show how a person felt while knitting: In a relaxed state, the stitches are loose and soft. Being physically tense creates a tight, rigid pattern. When we are daydreaming, small bumps or holes show. A knitted piece thus works like a diary of mental health. The details of the costume also feature nostalgic elements such as glass beads or Fimo, referring to childhood moments within the safer space of play. Costume, body and installation merge into a sculpture that does not reproduce heteronormative phenotypes, but invites the visitor to question their categorical habits of seeing.

CRUISING
A QUEER GLIMPSE

2021
Costume collab w/ Jule Posadowsky, Louise-Fee Nitschke via critical.costume

Concept, Direction: Josefina Valdovinos, Elias Dehnen
With: Elliot Douglas, Lucas Ngo, Josefina Valdovinos, Luca Zimmer, Alexandros Popis, Anna Krieger, Lou Moulin
Photos: Muriel Weinmann, Elin Laut

@ Schönholzer Heide, Berlin
(site-specific open-air performance)

Which relationship can a garment and a body enter into? Today's everyday clothing often functions like an elastic tube to which the body gives a specific shape. The garment adapts to the shape of the body. In our imagined utopia, queer bodies and garments should instead stand independently for themselves, coexist equally, and at points enter into a relationship of tension. Not allowing a clear allocation of gender or time, the costumes oscillate between sculpture and clothing, between futurism and historical references. In active contact with the body, reinforcing the wearer’s gestures.This overall ambiguity positions itself outside the binary system: The costumes create a space in which a queer utopia can be imagined without culturally defined boundaries of gender and sexuality.

dek

GLACIAL FLOW

2021
Costume

Choreography: Saida Makhmudzade
With: Clara Conza, Manon Greiner, Eddy Levin, Sabina Moe
Dramaturgy: Johann-Heinrich Rabe
Sound: Abel Kroon
Stage: Malte Knipping

@ bat studiotheater, Berlin

DEINE MACHT MIR NICHTS

2020
Costume

Text: Lena Reißner
With: Nina Bruns, Alina Fluck, Sarah Schmidt
Stage: Stella Lennert
Makeup: Sarah Seini
Sound: Ilkyaz Yagmur Ozkoroglu, Helena Niederstraßer

@ bat Studiotheater, Berlin

Virgin Mary appears in her typical robe, which usually covers her body and makes her silhouette appear childlike. Now, her naked body remains visible. We see human traits like pubic hair. This reverses the dehumanization of Virgin Mary originating from the idealization of the immaculate conception. The Mermaid’s claustrophobic confinement of her legs symbolizes the negation of feminine lust – which has been mystified as a male fantasy in the form of a fish tail. The latex refers to the fetishization of the missing vulva. Through typical fish features – gills, feelers, scales – this fetishization is taken to absurdity. Cassandra’s costume addresses objectification and agency: Reminiscent of a Greek statue, she is chained into her costume, which has the rigid form of a female-read body. Her face is frozen in white clay. In the course of the play, she breaks out of her costume – regaining agency over her formerly objectified body.

Praying Mantis

2020
Performative Installation w/ costume
Interactive durational performance (4 hours / 3 days)

Photos: Christina Huber, Alexandra Deem, Nikolaus Brade

@ Display Berlin Exhibition “Weltuntergang”
@ “KUNST RAUM STADT” University of Arts, Berlin

Curated by Constantin Hartenstein

After the apocalypse, the few species that have survived will start to live in symbiosis with each other to survive, rather than exploitation. From this state of being, a new ritualistic cult will arise. One member of this cult visits our present world, and invites you to a one-on-one ritualistic sequence.

instaface

2020
Costume and makeup
Exploring instagrams beauty ideals

b my quarantine

2020
Experimental costume design
Covid-19 series

paradise game

2019
Costume and stage concept
For the play “Paradies Spielen” by Thomas Köck

The play’s characters represent groups of people who suffer the same fate, who are trapped in the same system. Visually, they are therefore not individualized, but uniformed. Each figure wears the same gender and age neutral wig, as well as a transparent mask, both faces are vivible at the same time. The costume surrounds the body like a shell, and the identity of the performers is blurred by the mask. Binary categorizations become irrelevant. The costumes are stylized to go with the artificiality and interchangability of the characters.

Betterøv
2019
Costume design
Artist: Betterøv

Ein Kind Unserer Zeit

2019
Costume
Directed by Max Schimmelpfennig, Tim Freudensprung
Photos by Elin Laut, Leo Wolters

All the play’s characters exist in memory fragments of the narrator. Each person is remembered by one characteristic garment. On stage, the remembered person’s garment becomes a luminous, transparent shell that surrounds the narrator. For the duration of a memory, they become part of the narrator – as he tells their story, interweaving it with his own. The underlying uniformity symbolizes the loss of visual identity in the military; It also makes the military itself ever present on stage. The uniform itself is stylized and not historically locatable, as the message of the play is not fixed in space or time and is equally relevant in today’s world.