MiND THE GAP (ENG

Group exhibition about mental vulnerabilities within the LGBTQIA+ community
March, 10th - 21st of May 2023

Mind the Gap is a group exhibition addressing the gap between the mental health of LGBTQIA+ people compared to that of the general population. Despite steps being made towards recognising this community as equal in society, statistics paint a sobering picture of the reality of living as LGBTQIA+. The Netherlands, long considered as one of the countries in Europe with the most positive outlooks towards homosexuality, has created the image of the happy queer, but just how true is it? When suicide among LGBTQIA+ young people is 4.5 times more common than among heterosexual young people, and almost half of LGBTQIA+ people have contemplated ending their lives, the happy queer functions as a distractor, glossing over the everyday realities of being ‘different’. One in seven LGBTQIA+ people (14%) have avoided treatment for fear of discrimination. When already faced with discrimination, having a mental health vulnerability increases feelings of shame and stigma, marginalising this community further. 

This exhibition looks critically at these feelings to reveal how mental health continues to be prevalent within the LGBTQIA+ community, and crosses over generational, social, and geopolitical borders. Artworks by Annaleen Louwes, Diana Blok, Dodi Espinosa, Gabrielle Le Roux (in collaboration with Mustafa and Mamakil) and Jori(k) Amit Galama show how we cannot talk about the mental health of LGBTQIA+ people without also investigating the impact colonialism, gender violence, law and policy making has had on their day-to-day lives. The audience is invited to participate in a series of intimate encounters with people often overlooked in this community: the first-hand narratives and stories of queer migrants and refugees of colour, gender nonconformists, and trans activists are explored through portraiture, audiovisual works, and site-specific installations, which challenge the one-dimensional representation of the happy queer.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Annaleen Louwes
- pronoun: she
Annaleen Louwes makes photographs and moving image works that focus on the fragile and transient nature of human existence. Her interest lies in the way people survive in difficult circumstances and the impact this has on their bodies. Louwes has worked with undocumented migrants, psychiatric patients during her residency at Kings County Hospital, New York in 2014 with Beautiful Distress, sex workers in Colombia and built a studio in a women's prison in Tirana.

Diana Blok
- pronoun: she
Diana Blok is a self-taught visual artist born in Montevideo, Uruguay. She lived in Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia before choosing Amsterdam as a base from which she could function more freely as a female artist. Her nomadic background allows her to capture different cultures and identities in her photography and video installations, challenging the structures of the established order as an inspirator, innovator and connector. She investigates subjects as identity, gender, sexual diversity and culture with poetic and confrontational imagery. In the past 6 years her work evolved into interactive-video installation ’Gender Monologues’, unsettling the gender binary and performing archetypes of femininity and masculinity, blurring the disciplines of the moving image, performance and literature.

Dodi Espinosa
- Pronoun: he
Dodi Espinosa is an interdisciplinary artist, who uses a wide variety of mediums to reflect on themes like his sexual identity as a gay Latino, and wider issues surrounding race, sexuality, mental health and identity. Inspired by archaeology, sacred art, pop and Indigenous cultures, Espinosaʼs distinctly visual works disguise deeper messages. His work can be seen as both;  socially engaged and confessional, rooted in his personal life experiences, but also as a queer and postcolonial critique of universal issues. 

Gabrielle Le Roux (in collaboration with Mustafa and Mamakil)
- Pronoun: they/she
Gabrielle Le Roux is a queer South African artist, filmmaker, and activist for social justice. Le Roux collaborates, often at the invitation of other activists, to create portraits drawn from life onto which each person writes directly. Le Roux’s work stems from the conviction that people educate and transform one another through sharing the knowledge acquired through lived experience. First-person narratives in text, voice or video accompany the portrait drawings.

Jori(k) Amit Galama 
- Pronoun: they
Jori(k) Amit Galama is an interdisciplinary artist working between fine art, literature and cinema. Their work is concerned with the desire to make the vulnerability of the body experienceable, to connect with its flaws, sensuality, scars, and all the ways in which it is porous to the ecosystem(s) in which it is situated. The sharing of intimate stories is at the centre of their practice, thereby often focusing on how trauma, mental health and discrimination play out in everyday situations and encounters for LGBTQI+ people. 

program

Thursday 30 April 16.00 - 18.00: Artist Talk with Andreina Fuentes Angarita
Watch the video here

Salon Talks 19 May 18.00 - 20.00
Join Maayan Ben Gal, photographer, designer and producer of Mind the Gap, for an intimate conversation with professional dragtivist, art educator and creative director of the House of Hopelezz, Taka Taka. In this intimate conversation we travel with him through a difficult period for him in which he struggled with his mental health. Taka Taka will share for the first time how the Drag House helped him. This intimate conversation is the first in a series of conversations with Maayan entitled Salon Talks.

Screening Uit ‘T Leven 20 May 15.30 - 17.30
For two years, documentary maker Tim Dekkers and screenwriter Henk Burger followed three LGBTQIA+ main characters who went through an inky black period of depression and suicide attempts. Will the acrobat Jean, model/trans woman Solange and alderman Kris manage to get back on track and set an example for others? The result is this poignant documentary. The documentary was screened during the Roze Filmdagen and was immediately sold out. Grab your chance now to see it in the middle of the Mind The Gap exhibition in Beautiful Distress House. Screenwriter Henk and alderman Kris will answer your questions during a Q&A after the screening. Also good to know: with your ticket of 3.50 you get a free drink!
Buy your ticket here

LIMPIA + QUEMA 21 May 16.00 - 18.00
After Limpia's impressive performance in March, Dodi Espinosa will return to the Beautiful Distress House on Sunday, May 21 to offer everyone another chance to participate in this cleansing and burning ceremony. Limpia, which translates to cleanse, is a spiritual ritual dating back to pre-Hispanic Mexico, intended to cure a person of their mental or physical ailments by cleansing them with frankincense. We cordially invite you to use this ritual to close the exhibition in a special way.

COLOFON

Artists: Annaleen Louwes, Diana Blok, Dodi Espinosa, Gabrielle Le Roux, Jori(k) Amit Galama
Project initiator: Wilco Tuinebreijer
Curation: Maggie Kuzan
Production: Maayan Ben Gal, Wilco Tuinebreijer
Team Beautiful Distress: Ezra van der Schaaf, Livia Spies, Esther Frank, Anna ter Haar
Special thanks to: Emma Parker

This exhibition was made possible with the help of Amsterdam Fonds voor de kunsten, Arkin, Club Church/Stichting Gala, Gemeente Amsterdam, Economic and Social Research Council, Mondriaan fund, Salvation Army Amsterdam, Thami Mnylee Foundation, University of Leicester, Vriendenloterij Fonds, Wellcome Trust.