ISBN: 978-3-9825585-3-0
122 pages with color
16,5 x 23,5 cm (softcover)
published: April 2024
DAVID JESTER with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1996 and completed his graduate studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ in the same year. Although his degrees are in sculpture, for the past four years he has been working on a series of paintings that explore queer identity. As he recalls, he enjoyed swimming while growing up, but what drew him to pools was the way they isolate the bodies from sound, movement, and even gravity, creating a group of people that become their own community, even for a moment in time, in another “world” with its own rules of time, space, and color. This is how Jester sees the gay community: separate, but at the same time part of a larger world.
ERIN TAYLOR is a writer and artist living in Los Angeles. Taylor has been a poet since 2015, eventually becoming a journalist for five years in New York City where Tylor also worked as the arts editor of Observer for two years. Tylor is now working on their debut novel, a collection of short stories, several screenplays, and developing their first short film. Taylors book “Bimboland” is out through Archway Editions and you can probably buy it at your local bookstore.
GLEN EICKERS has been living and working in Berlin since 2015. Gen's main occupation is academic philosophy; they work on gender, emotions, and social norms. When not doing philosophy, Gen engages in making art: they draw, write and photograph. Their artistic work revolves around patterns, queerness, and social critique. They are currently working on their photo series “Twinks, Daddies, Fags - A critical examination of gay masculinities”, excerpts of which can be seen in this zine. Gen has also organized and curated several queer art events in Berlin (for example Fuck Me Tender, Embodiments, Attack on (your) patriarchy).
JO SORDINI is a transmasculine artist living in Berlin. Their performances, movies and objects are part of a playful investigation into the social constructs that surround us. Queer politics and aesthetics are at the center of their work: Sensual creatures, objects and images create multi-layered narratives in a colorful and often surreal do-it-yourself aesthetic. Ultimately, they hope to create spaces and narratives that break up limited and normalized visions of the present and future.
MIT BORRAS is a visual artist based in Madrid and Berlin. His work examines the relationship and interconnectivity between human, nature and technological progress and their purpose of evolution with a transhumanist perspective. He has developed an acclaimed body of work that encompasses visions of a post-human state of consciousness that involves video-based and digital art works, performances and multi-dimensional media installations. Borrás has been exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Art Dubai, UAE, and Hara Museum, Tokyo, among others. His work is also presented on prestigious private digital art collections. As independent curator he has co-directed Fünf Galerie in Berlin and worked as coordinator of cultural projects at Instituto Cervantes in Germany. Currently he collaborates as professor of digital & media art and art direction at Tai University and UCIII University. He is the founder of Cavve Studio and his work is represented by House of Chappaz Gallery.
NYMPHO-MENAGE (Cochon de Cauchemar) is a Berlin-based queer visual and performance artist using costume and set design, dance, movement, photography, video and autobiographical storytelling to reflect on female* socialization in a working-class environment through the idea of a domestic and traumatic heritage. Graduated in Fashion and Textile Design in France, she decided instead to fully embrace her passionate relationship with housework, to explore in the artistic framework practices of control and [self-]domestication of the body within the domestic sphere. With a touch of absurdity. Since 2022, Nympho-Ménage has been playing in the theater production “Mother Tongue”, directed by Lola Arias at the Maxim Gorki Theater. After premiering at Radialsystem as part of the Forecast Forum 7, Nympho-Ménage has been presenting her first solo short performance DUSTBUSTERS* in several cities like Munich, Hamburg, and Porto in Portugal.
PHILLIPP VALENTA studied fine arts in Weimar, Hildesheim and Braunschweig. In his work, he explores values and concepts of value, both material and immaterial, in the fields of economics and finance, fashion, faith and love. Since 2008, his work has been exhibited in Germany and Europe, including at Centre Pompidou (2023), Museum Ostwall in Dortmund (2023), Verein Junge Kunst in Wolfsburg (2020) and Kunstmuseum Bayreuth (2019). He was awarded the Hans Purrmann Prize in 2021 and scholarships have taken him several times to Iceland, Austria, Spain and Romania. He lives and works in Gelsenkirchen and Oberhausen.
SARAH BERGER is a genderqueer author, photographer, performance artist and queer-feminist activist. For over a decade, they has been using various social media formats with auto fictional texts, photographs and social media collages. Berger's artistic works are based on a queer-feminist stance and oscillate between introspective observation and socio-critical analysis. Berger's publications include “Match Deleted - Tinder Shorts”, published by Frohmann Verlag in 2017. Further publications followed in Sukultur, Metamorphosen Magazin, Pop Kultur und Kritik and Berliner Zeitung. In 2020, Berger’s short story collection Sex und Perspektive was published by Herzstück Verlag, which also brought out the novella “Wen es etwas angeht” 2022. Berger lives and works in Berlin.
TEGWEN EVANS’ artistic journey blends personal exploration with a commitment to capturing connection, influenced by mental health and queer identity. Initially drawn to photography for its unique perspective, Tegwen’s creativity transcends boundaries, embracing diverse mediums like cyanotype printing and Polaroid manipulation. Their work has been exhibited globally, from Berlin to New York, and featured in both physical zines and digital platforms. Believing in art’s power to facilitate communal emotional processing, Tegwen’s pieces invite viewers to engage with their own interpretations, fostering immersive spaces for reflection and connection.
BENJAMIN EGGER is a media scholar researching the interface between digital art and queer theory. He is writing his doctoral thesis at Leuphana University Lüneburg on the topic of “Post-digital curating from a queer perspective”. Between 2017 and 2023, he worked at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam and taught in the field of cultural education, post-digital art and queer media studies. In 2021, he edited the anthology “Transdisziplinäre Begegnungen zwischen postdigitaler Kunst und Kultureller Bildung” published by Springer. As a freelance curator, he has realized group and solo exhibitions with international artists in Berlin and online, including “un/natural surrogates” (2019) and “queer AND BEYOND [choose category]” (2021). Currently, he works at the Museum of Communication Berlin.
rosé, vol. 1 - friendship
Edited by Benjamin Egger & Sarah Berger
Contributions by David Jester, Erin Taylor, Gen Eickers, Jo Sordini, Mit Borrás, Nympho-Ménage, Philipp Valenta, Sarah Berger and Tegwen Evans.
Queer, once understood hostilely as deviation from normative social orders, today embodies self-determined ways of living. In that, queer people creatively shape notions of sexual desire and gender identity, as well as relationships, and much more.
In this context, and throughout queer culture and history, friendship is one of the fundamental principles of self-organization. Friendship creates security, protection, care and togetherness where institutions fail to provide queer people with adequate support structures, or even worse, incite discrimination. Especially in the art sector, queers represent stakeholders with multiple precarious backgrounds exposed to increased economic and health pressures. This is where queer relations and networks can serve as safety nets, strategies of emotional and economic support as well as survival.
This zine is about friendship in a double sense. It is based on a long and deep communion between the editors. In addition, nine artists and collectives discuss the topic in many different ways: often overtly addressing intimacy, like-mindedness, closeness, and often vaguely, along the lines of technology, networks, and dependence.
Intended to be a space for queer artists, queer art and queer themes, rosé puts the works at its center. It features photography, performance, design, installation, happening, painting, social media art, sculpture and drag. In this sense, rosé can be seen as an exhibition that can be touched, picked up, taken away and shared. This is rosé, meant to be in motion.
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