Some Faggy Gestures

The "Mnemosyne" of sexual identity

Since the mid-1990s, Henrik Olesen (*1967 Denmark, lives and works in Berlin) has used media such as collage, sculpture, and minimalistic spatial intervention to investigate the social construction of identity and its historiography. Through the appropriation of source images and contextual shifts not dissimilar to the method invented by Aby Warburg for his "Mnemosyne Atlas," Olesen probes the associations between homosexuality and its criminalization in the past, as well as in the present. His archival work sheds light on the enduring existence of spaces for Others, and inscribes homosexual subculture once more into the history of art and culture.

Published with the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.

Awarded in the competition "The most beautiful Swiss books 2008."