The space acts as a sonnet to a 'void afar', a place of rejuvenation, unravelling, and melancholy; this experience encourages visitors to abandon their fixed notions of the ego and return to fictional landscapes.
Dante utilises their queerness as methodology through humour and props with sexual and Lovecraftian references, ironically exaggerating set expectations around performativity. Xoth, a green binary star where Cthulu and his kind once lived, represents a symbolic state of longing and otherness. This queer home planet symbolises a fictional idea of belonging, a location far away that provides essential desires and needs to its user yet is unobtainable.
How, as others, do we get to this sense of belonging and acceptance? Dante's work uses the representation of delving into the depths of the earth to attempt to find answers, much like a Lovecraftian story or the simple acceptance of living in a world of performativity. Using the participle of 'unravelling', a process of unwinding, digging, revealing, and dismantling, supporting literal and figurative concepts explored through the exhibition. To Xoth! And Then Back Again as a title and work remind us of the continuity of masking, that as humans, both queer and non, must indefinitely return to journey to the external alien states of performativity to meet the demands of social norms.
Artist Bio
Born on the traditional lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people/Perth, Dante's practice exposes the learnt self of the expressed performance, embracing a new fluidity where the melancholic expository body becomes a vessel for constant transformation. Completing their Honours in Fine Arts at RMIT in 2020, they delved into modes of self-exploration and the experience of being in flux, heavily focusing on practices of Queer Theory and the state of objectification from systemic norms. Through their work, they aim to interrupt the expected, ultimately creating a sur-reality, a new geography that allows a free-flowing 'existence' of body and identity.
