The curatorial team, including Sarnt Utamachote, Hải Nam Nguyễn, Ferdiansyah Thajib, Thảo Hồ and Ragil Huda, invite you to the opening of the show “Young Birds from Strange Mountains – Queer Art from Southeast Asia and its Diaspora”. Free admission!

The Title „Young Birds From Strange Mountains” is borrowed from a poem by the Vietnamese gay-closeted poet Ngô Xuân Diệu (1916-1985), who was a correspondent member at Akademie der Künste during GDR times. Some of his poems were censored for depicting same-sex intimacy, which at the time did not align with a social communist society. “Young Birds” can be interpreted as representing the experience of queer people living in in societies where they struggle to find belonging, yet still leave a lasting mark on history. It can also symbolize artists, archivists and activists emerging from “strange mountains”, continuously reimagining ways of living differently.

The exhibition “Young Birds from Strange Mountains” features exciting, extraordinary works by queer artists from Southeast Asia and its Diaspora, particularly those with backgrounds from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia. With different collaborative and community-based approaches, the curators and artists show attempt to rebuild and re-investigate ancestral knowledge as well as engage with multiple archives such as directly from Schwules Museum, A Queer Museum Hanoi and Queer Indonesia Archive, enriching them with contemporary artistic practices.

Image: Wax Follies, female impersonator group from Penang, 1982, found photo collection of Hoo Fan Chon