User:Manifestrosa/D Loves The Sodomites

D Loves The Sodomites (Menorca, Spain; June 5, 1990) is a singer, performer, visual artist, writer, poet, researcher and educator. His music, audiovisual work, photographs, and writings stand out for their high plasticity, poetic style, the great depth of their dissident discourse, and commitment to the LGTBIQ+ community. His musical and visual language oscillates between decadent and nocturnal symbolism, the most celestial lyricism, the rawness of art brut or outsider art, and the crudest and most personal self-production formulas.

From a glamorous and elegant vision, and the place of a tormented poet, the themes he deals with prove a process of rigorous self-knowledge, pointing out taboo issues such as death, gender, and sexual identity, and the relationship with the place where he was born, Menorca. His work is full of literary references, giving rise to a vast queer imaginary materialized in video art, performance, photography, poetry, and essays.

Biography and Artistic Career
D Loves The Sodomites (Menorca, Spain; June 5, 1990) is a singer, performer, visual artist, writer, poet, researcher and educator. His music, audiovisual work, photographs, and writings stand out for their high plasticity, poetic style, the great depth of their dissident discourse, and commitment to the LGTBIQ+ community. His musical and visual language oscillates between decadent and nocturnal symbolism, the most celestial lyricism, the rawness of art brut or outsider art, and the crudest and most personal self-production formulas.

From a glamorous and elegant vision, and the place of a tormented poet, the themes he deals with prove a process of rigorous self-knowledge, pointing out taboo issues such as death, gender, and sexual identity, and the relationship with the place where he was born, Menorca. His work is full of literary references, giving rise to a vast queer imaginary materialized in video art, performance, photography, poetry, and essays.

He began in the arts by participating in photographic exhibitions in Spain and Europe while studying Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. His first exhibitions were titled La Deconstruïm at the University of Barcelona (2012), Postmortem Portraits at the Espai Francesc Català-Roca (Barcelona, ​​2013), and Ruins at the Revela-T Festival (Catalonia, 2013), Analogica (Italy, 2014), Analogmania (Romania, 2014) and Analogue Festival (London, 2014).

He continued his studies in London, developing his artistic praxis and his research on the relationship between death, sexuality, and gender, from which emerged his final degree work, the site-specific performance Danse Macabre (2013), registered in analog photographs, and which he would later repeat in 2017 in the form of video art or video dance.

In 2013 he moved to Madrid where he completed a Master's Degree in Art Education at the Complutense University of Madrid. This was a period dedicated to creation, during which he produced much of his photographic work in the context of La Casa Encendida laboratory.

He returned to Menorca, his birthplace, in 2014. He studied for a year at the School of Performing Arts, and curated and participated as an artist in the exhibition ''Rissaga. New Wave of Menorcan Artists, from which he published a book titled Rissaga. New Wave of Menorcan Artists. 6 concepts to approach performance and presented Venus (2015) ; the first of the site-specific performances, which gave rise to the beginning of Pink Room''. It was a prolific period in which he discovered his voice, and his ability for poetry and composition.

Later he moved to Paris, fully dedicated to studying and training in different types of dance and singing, he continued developing and shaping the audiovisual content of Pink Room and the lyrics of his songs. This constituted one of the most mature stages concerning his artistic praxis, concluding with him returning to Spain and settling back in Barcelona.

In 2017, after filming Eva (2016) and a long and exhaustive regime of body and vocal training, he decided to contextualize his creation process in the Balearic-Catalan artistic scene, by participating in art residencies and showing the work in progress of Pink Room in spaces such as the Miró Foundation (Mallorca, 2017), to film at the same time the site-specific performance Ophelia (2017). Afterward, the work in progress of Pink Room was shown at Nau Bostik (Barcelona, ​​2018). Meanwhile, he filmed the site-specific performance of Pietà (2018) in Menorca.

Principios de Refinamiento was an exhibition that took place at Casal Solleric (Mallorca, 2018). It was curated by El Palomar, who put in dialogue the work of Dani Curbelo and D Loves The Sodomites. Pink Room was displayed in one of the exhibitions’ room, and during the opening, in the other room, took place a newly created site-specific performance and audiovisual installation entitled Echo (2018), which opened the possibility of creating a new project.

At the end of 2018 he performed and shot Sodomita in La Capella de Sant Roc (Tarragona, 2019). During the summer of the same year, he began working on the sound production of Pink Room with the completion of two artistic residencies in New York, one at Harvestworks and the other one at Gamba'z Art Residency.

He was interviewed in the book A Tiro de Piedra: Cercar Lo Posible (Mallorca, 2019) by the curators and researchers 1er Escalón and in the exhibition of Balearic artists Where Does Reality Reside? in Es Baluard. He was a finalist in the Young Art Contest of the Balearic Islands, and participated in the finalists’ exhibition by displaying a video installation of Ophelia (2017).

Three of his projects were awarded with three research and creative grants, with one of which he made the videoperformance Lazaret: The Maîtresse, The Slave and The Island of Sodomy , with another one he could begin the research project entitled Forms of Self-Representation: Dissidence of Gender and Sexuality in Photography, in Poetry (written and sung), in Performance and in the Artist's Book in residency at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Macba) Study Center ; and finally with the one that lasts he created and shot the video Pink Room or Salomé, a choreographic research project developed in residency at Nau Estruch. In 2020, after returning to his native Menorca, and amid the COVID-19 virus pandemic, he shot what would initially be the last video for the album titled Pink Room or Salome, finally in January 2021 he self-published ''Pink Room. The Visual Album''         , their first LP of fourteen songs accompanied by an audiovisual story made up of images of the site-specific performances previously made. The same year he kept receiving art production grants and participated again in the Young Art Contest of the Balearic Islands, this time in the theater section, bringing to the stage the the song Leda i El Cigne accompanied by the video performance Ophelia. .

He took part in a technical residency for the staging of Pink Room at the Albert Camus Theater (Menorca, 2021) which wasn’t very fruitful, aftawards he gave an informal show at Es Castell Neighborhood Association (Menorca, 2021).

June of 2021 was a month of artistic expansion, showing the performance Queer Ophelia in Illes d'Art 6 curated by Es Far Cultural at Casal Solleric (Mallorca) and opening the music festival Sons de Nit in Es Baluard, being programmed together with great figures of the national and international music scene organized by Fonart. The month of performances closes by showing Pink Room at the Convent de Sant Diego during the program of Orgull 2021 in Alayor(Menorca).

On the 5th of November 2021, he opened his first retrospective exhibition titled Habitació Rosa (Pink Room or Habitación Rosa) in El Roser de Ciutadella (Menorca)  , an exhibition that shows the work produced from 2011 to 2021 through a circular room design based on Campbell's Monomyth, which includes analog photographs, performance, video art, installation, essays, artist books and other graphic material created for many of his past projects. A reduced version of the same project was shown at Sant Antoni Art Space in Maó (Menorca), under the title ''Pink Room. The Journey of the Antihero'' , from whose exhibition a homonymous book with unreleased writings was published. During the opening of the show, the councilor of culture from the local government publicly apologized for having vilified the project. Between 2021 and 2023, he received four research, art training, and creative grants from Consell Insular de Menorca and Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics, with whose funds he opened new projects and concluded the script for the musical piece and film Pink Room, which included a poetic monologue that interweaves the video images and the songs. During this period, some images from the shots of the pieces Descensión (2022) and Ascensión (2023) were added to the final edit of Pink Room. Those materials ended up forming part of the performance concert as well, and were premiered in a show held at the Menorca gallery of Hauser & Wirth  , located in Illa del Rey.

Censorship
His work, presented in countless competitions from 2007 to the present, received innumerable praise and suggestions to apply in specific competitions and calls, in which he is ultimately not selected. This reality reveals the precariousness, perversity, and nepotism that flood the art system, and suffocate its artists, even more so those who dissent from white supremacism, cisgender and patriarchal hegemony. Such censures reach the ears of the artist due to his contacts in the art world, who end up being part of the juries of the competitions and calls.

The epitome of the censorship of his work takes place when he was selected in 2022 in the governmental exhibition competition organized by the Consell Insular de Mallorca, whose team uses the pretext of not being able to hold online meetings with the artist, who is residing in Barcelona, for not having the equipment to hold telematic meetings. After agreeing to collaborate with a well-known curator in Mallorca, and she settled dates and space with the government for the art show Pink Room in Mallorca, the artist received an official electronic notification, that his exhibition was canceled, without prior notice or negotiation.

Scholarships and awards
2023 - Grants for artists. Consell Insular de Menorca.

2022 - Grants for artists. Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics.

2022 - Grants for artists’ training. Consell Insular de Menorca

2021 - Research Grant for Artists. Consell Insular de Menorca

2020 - Grants for artists. Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics.

2019 - Research Grant for Artists. Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics and MACBA Study Center.

Videos and performances
One Last Dream A Queer Genesis, 2023.

Descension, 2023. Sant Cugat.

Ascension, 2022. Sa Cetària. Menorca

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxg3PoB3m3Y Queer Ophelia, 2021. Casal Solleric]

[https://vimeo.com/438253067?share=copy Pink Room o Salomé, 2020. Barcelona Hotel .]

[https://vimeo.com/365939158?share=copy ''Lazaret. The Maîtresse, The Slave and The Island of Sodomy'', 2019. Illa del Llàtzaret, Menorca.]

[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7g4iiDfcZHU Echo, 2018. Casal Solleric.]

[https://vimeo.com/306491447?share=copy Sodomita, 2018. Capella de Sant Roc, Tarragona.]

[https://vimeo.com/419897421?share=copy Pietà, 2017. Es Llusà, Menorca.]

[https://vimeo.com/230351724?share=copy Ophelia, 2017. S’Avenc De Son Pou, Mallorca]

[https://vimeo.com/230350893?share=copy Danse Macabre, 2013 - 2017. London.]

[https://vimeo.com/220192436?share=copy Eva, 2016. La Vall, Menorca]

[https://vimeo.com/209072704?share=copy Venus, 2015. Es Talaier and Cales Piques, Menorca]

Photography
Untitlted (Sacrifices series), 2013 - 2015

Venus, 2014 - 2015.

Danse Macabre, 2013.

Ruins, 2013.

Self-portraits, 2012.

Postmortem Portraits, 2012.

Untitled (The Doll series), 2009.

Other work
Ashes to Ashes, Dust To Dust, 2012. Installation. 10 m x 1,5 m. Parker Quink Ink on paper.

''Pink Room. The songbook. Photographs and Lyrics''. 2012 -2018, 2021. Artist's Book.

Untitled (Neon Pink Triangle), 2015. Installation.

Pink Room. The Visual Album, 2021(self-published).
Tracklist: 1. Will You Ever Be An Artist?, 2. Jesus Christ, 3. Blossom, 4. I’m Gonna Blast You, 5. 27 Years, 6. Drown To You, 7. Time’s Eternal, 8. Leda And The Swan, 9. Leda i El Cigne, 10. Daphne, 11. Enfant Terrible, 12. Carry Me, 13. Wet Naked Torsos y 14. Watch Them Burn.

Videos:

1. Eva (2016), 2. Danse Macabre (2013-2017), 3. Venus (2015), 4. Ophelia (2017), 5. Pietà (2017), 6. Salomé o Pink Room (2020), 7. Sodomite (2018) Y 8. Lazaret. The Maîtresse, The Slave and The Island of Sodomy, 2019. Illa del Llàtzaret, Menorca (2019), 9. Descension (2022) y 10. Ascension (2023).

Books
[https://issuu.com/daniamorospulido/docs/cat__leg_web_1 ''Rissaga. New'' Wave Of Menorquin Artists. Author: Daniel Amorós. Translations and corrections: Marta Marquès i Marga Mascaró. Published: Ajuntament de Ciutadella, 2015.]

Pink Room (The Songbook 2012 - 2018 Photographs and Lyrics). Artist's Book, 2021. Author: Daniel Amorós.

[https://issuu.com/daniamorospulido/docs/habitaci_rosa_-_el_viatge_de_l_heroi_-_llibret_-_ Pink Room (The Journey of the Antihero). Exhibition Catalogue and artist book. Author: Daniel Amorós. Published: Ajuntament de Maó, 2022.]

Books and articles featuring his work
A Tiro De Piedra: Acercar Lo Posible, 2019. Autor: 1er Escalon. Ed. Es Baluard.

Artnobel N. 19, 2021. The main article includes work by Daniel Amorós.