17 – 20 April
Private View : Tuesday 16 April, 6-9pm
A group exhibition curated by Whiskey Chow.
QUEER ENOUGH is an exhibition curated by artist Whiskey Chow that delves into the contemporary landscape of queer art, questioning whether we have moved beyond the era where queer art was primarily associated with LGBTQ+ visibility and representation. Against the backdrop of the commodification of queer code in the arts and cultural industry, algorithmic influences, social voyeurism, and the pursuit of social media approval, the exhibition aims to explore nowadays how queer artists navigate societal norms, various gazes, indifference, hegemony, and consumerism while creating space for queer resilience and sensitivity.
QUEER ENOUGH is a group exhibition as part of The Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture FESTUS 2024. FESTUS is an annual happening and one of the most significant in the RCA Sculpture programme – a series of collaborative projects between students and external partners.
Participating artists:
Ziyang Chen
Danny Young
Dom Metcalfe
Margaux Halloran
Xize Xu
Jing Guo
Ningxin Kong
Chuqi Fang
Yicai Pan
Jingwen Zhang
Raya Kassisieh
Claudia Martignetti
Madona George
Siyan Zheng
Mandy Lane
Claudia Martignetti
@artignetti
Claudia Martignetti (b. 2001) is a sculptor from London. A recent Fine Art graduate from Goldsmiths, she is currently studying a Masters in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. Martignetti’s sculptural practice is the fruition of her obsession with the forms and colours of nostalgic playthings, penetrated with the discomfort of the uncanny. Using her collection of toys from times gone by, she distorts their configuration. The artist repeatedly transposes her own likeness onto these objects, mutating their sculptural forms with her face and body parts. Though standing grotesque in form, the works are lustrous and vibrant in saccharine colour. In her sculptures, she merges personal and intimate processes with more computerised and industrial methods. She delicately hand paints 3D printed plastic, machined wood and polystyrene coated in invulnerable polyester resin and fibreglass. The effect is invitingly gaudy while defensive.
Danny Young
@dannythesculptor
Danny Young is a Welsh Sculptor and Installation artist, studying and living in London. He is currently studying an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art which is due to be completed in August 2024. Core to Danny’s work is the ideas and experiences surrounding social and societal Class, through looking and referencing his own Welsh, working-class background. Danny’s work looks to question and investigate ideas surrounding aesthetic, taste, language and culture in relation to class, through working with themes of Queer Love & desire, Masculinity, the Fake & Phoney and Pain & Pleasure. By working with an Object/ motifs relationship to material, meaning and storytelling, Danny plays with historical and social contexts through juxtaposing and subverting existing hierarchical social, power dynamics within the practise of sculpture. He is interested in conveying uncensored stories, referencing the sculptures and heroic narratives we all love, with the rough and unapologetic beauty of the working-class.
Dom Sebastian
@dmsebastian9
Dom Sebastian (b.1994) is a London-based British artist currently completing an MA in Sculpture at the RCA, and holds a BA from Central Saint Martins. Their work explores the complexities of categorization, the themes of otherness and excess, and the act of queering the mundane. Through a transformative process that both mutates and eroticizes everyday objects, the work provides a commentary on the role of consumer goods as markers of identity. This exploration is underpinned by a tension between desire and disgust; and the dark excesses and glittering allure of pop culture.
Jing Guo
@astrophel_astra
Jing Guo is an artist based in London and currently studying in Royal College of Art. She draws inspiration from her self-experience, exploring themes of personal identity through a range of visual media.
Jingwen Zhang
@wendyzhang2526
Jingwen Zhang is a Chinese artist who always has the intention of gaining public awareness of mental problems and somatic symptoms brought by mental illness. Her inspirations are mostly come from her own experiences and feelings. She wants to express some uncomfortable feelings through her work, by which to help the audiences empathize with those people who have mental problems.
Madona George
@madd.george
Madona George is an artist currently residing in London. George’s work is often a result of memories she holds of places once called home. Her childhood was marked by moving around from place to place. Through her works, she questions what is home, reflecting on her own unbelonging and struggle to associate with permanence. As a result, her works are often temporal in nature. Her pieces are often seen as living entities, evolving over time as the materials respond to their environment. Wood may weather or warp, metal might oxidise, and water continues its ceaseless flow, all under George’s careful orchestration. This aspect of change and transformation is central to her work, reflecting her philosophical inquiry into the impermanence of existence.
Mandy Lane
@mandylanesculpture
Mandy Lane is a British artist born in 1980 studying sculpture at the Royal College of Art. Lane is a multi-disciplinary artist who specialises in fugitive sculpture, film, and installation. Lane delves into the intricate interplay of themes encompassing domestic space, childhood memory, trauma, vulnerability, and responsibility, all under the lens of broader inquiries into the marginalised, displaced, and power dynamics inherent within the familial construct. In recent developments, Lane’s artistic inquiry has gravitated towards the contemporary landscape of queerness, with a specific focus on LGBTQ+ visibility and representation. Central to Lane’s practice is the endeavour to navigate societal norms surrounding safe queer spaces, foregrounding the domains of the home and family unit.
Margaux Halloran
@margauxhalloran
Margaux Halloran (b. 1999 Florida, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in London. Framed by an assemblage methodological approach—Halloran’s practice engages with conversations around cultural seduction, safety, queerness, and relationships. They received their Bachelor in Fine Art from Parsons School of Design (New York), and are currently pursuing a Masters in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art.
Ningxin Kong
@ninni_artacc
Ningxin Kong is an artist mainly engaged in sculpture, installation and moving image creation. She is used to finding inspiration in her daily life through the transformation of materials or the combination of existing materials. Through her practice, she studies and focuses on the body, gender, and its relationship to biopolitical power. The presentation focuses more on female labor, physical awakening, gaze, politics, and expression. Her artworks focus on diversity and inclusion in gender roles and advocates that everyone should be treated with respect and equality. Specifically, she draws attention to the social and political issues of labor in a global context. These works discuss women’s “housework” in the name of love as “wife” and “mother” in the family and women’s freedom of choice in the body. Ningxin argues that living in a patriarchal society like ours, thinking and experiencing yourself as a woman, is a challenge in itself.
Raya Kassisieh
@rayakassisieh
Raya Kassisieh (b.1991) is a Palestinian-Jordanian multidisciplinary artist currently based in London and completing an MA at the Royal College of Art. Prior, she was raised in Amman, Jordan, she spent a decade in New York beginning her career and earning a BFA from Pratt Institute, before relocating to Dubai, UAE, to further her investigations. Kassisieh’s speculative practice presents a deeply personal interrogation of form engaging with the politics of the body. She crafts embodied experiences where the personal unfurls as political. Fusing knowledge in textile with the raw tactility of sculptural and painting media, she explores the corporeal form—challenging, reclaiming, and celebrating it. Her pieces act as hidden performance, articulating silent dialogues on autonomy and identity. The nuances of heritage and personal history become universal questions, confronting the silent orchestrations of societal constructs and turning her work into an arena for the renegotiation of presence and cessation.
Siyan Zheng
@zoellasssy
Siyan Zheng, a young artist. The works are usually dependent on their own actual personal experience, the imagination of the known and the unknown reconstruction, and finally transform abstract concepts into spatial visual language, with installations, images, planes and other forms, constantly explore the boundary between art and society.
Xize Xu
@Xanderxzx
Xu Xize (b.1997) is an Asian LGBTQ+ artist whose creative journey began as a singer and has evolved into installation art and photography. Influenced by the multicultural collision of East and West, her work explores the complexity of identity, culture and social challenges. By collecting and reinventing common objects, she interchanges subject and object, using the objects to speak of emotions. Xu Xize’s artwork serves as both a platform for
personal expression and a bridge for social dialog, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences and question current norms and values. Her ultimate goal is to create a space that amplifies the voices of marginalized groups
and critically examines the complexity of human existence.
Yicai Pan
@ii_caii
Yicai Pan (b.2001) is an artist based in London, currently studying MA Sculpture at Royal College of Art. She views art mediums as an integral part of her personal worldview. Through moving image, sculpture, and painting, she explores the contemporary world from a post-humanism perspective. She often employs fictional narratives to discuss the boundaries between virtual and real, known and unknown.
Ziyang Chen
@its.ziyang
Dr Ziyang Chen (b.1992), a Chinese artist based in London and currently studying Master of Sculpture in Royal College of Art. Having lived in the London for a decade, Ziyang has developed a unique and integral insight into the likenesses and contradictions of both Chinese and British culture. His practice focuses primarily on sculpture; conceptualising contemporary queer masculinity and body, provoking the stereotype about the beauty hierarchy of East Asian queer in Western society, deconstructing and constructing of social norms and boundaries in addition to opposing and contrasting force.
Fang Chuqi
@chu00kie
Fang Chuqi constantly switches their narrative language in sculpture, sound, graphic, and writing to communicate with the world. In their interaction with the world, they seek and query new identity definitions. They are a woman, queer, and Asian. Their works might define them, or contrary have no relevance to their own character. As they will eventually blend with the world, their works will be submitted to the world equally.
