“Queer Quintessential” exhibition: Photography in Context

Get to know the artists behind the Der Greif “Queer Quintessential” online exhibition for Pride Month framing Pride as protest

Der Greif presents the launch of the online exhibition, “Queer Quintessential”, exploring queer life, community, and self-representation. This special online exhibition endeavors to expand cultural comprehension and foster a more inclusive conversation within the art community through the diverse languages of lens-based media.

We selected artworks by ten artists who reframe pride from a historical milestone to a living, breathing duality: pride as an act of radical protest, and pride as a collective insistence on joy. We are considering how queer identities are shaped by social, cultural, and environmental conditions, and how they are expressed through image-making. The work engages with self-representation, chosen family, intimacy, and the relationship between public and private space, proving that the simple act of surviving, thriving, and loving on one’s own terms is a powerful political statement.

The exhibition begins with the theatrical, tragicomic defiance of "Army of Clown," in which Niccolò Quaresima portrays the lived experiences of the queer community in Milan. By adopting the figure of the clown as a tool for social critique, Quaresima turns a playful lens on the absurd, fear-mongering narratives of the far right. These collaborative photo sessions function as literal community-making exercises, transforming public space through an upcoming guerrilla-style installation. Here, play and humor become weapons of reclamation, demanding visibility where marginalized voices have been systematically pushed aside.

Our next artist similarly explores community dynamics, finding a profound form of protest in the preservation of queer joy. J Davies’ “Incase We Don’t Live Forever” builds an ongoing photographic archive of queer and trans life across Naarm (Melbourne) and international borders. Responding to a historical absence of visible futures for queer adulthood, Davies captures friends, lovers, and chosen family in moments of tenderness, sensuality, and rest. By centering consent and mutual recognition, the project resists narratives that flatten queer life into tragedy alone, offering a monumental celebration of survival, desire, and community longevity.

Where Davies archives communal intimacy, Leah DeVun turns her lens toward the domestic sphere in "Resemblance," arguing that ordinary family life can be a radical political act. Documenting her own queer family, specifically her partner, a transgender father raising their son, DeVun counters the limited and politically weaponized view of trans life in the United States. While recognizing external threats, the series defiantly showcases a home life full of safety, care, and quiet joy. By rejecting simplistic respectability politics while asserting self-determination, these photographs provide a vital blueprint for younger generations to imagine an abundant future.

The absence of historical ancestors and the grief of cultural erasure are met with creative defiance in Shia Conlon's "If your history was an ache." Confronting the stark gaps in major Western LGBTQIA+ archives regarding domestic trans life, Conlon utilizes handmade ceramic frames and photographic collages to weave threads across historical voids. The project frames desire as a methodology, a persistent, joyful drive to see, touch, and know past narratives even as material memory breaks down. Conlon’s practice translates historical absence into a tactile, material embodiment, transforming grief into an active protest of presence.

Questions of exile, heritage, and the pursuit of freedom emerge in Hashim Nasr’s project "Dreaming of transit." Drawing on his own journey as a Sudanese conceptual artist living in Egypt, Nasr explores the emotional complexities of being an LGBTQA+ person in the Middle East and North Africa. Using surreal, avant-garde imagery populated by symbolic props and dreamlike settings, the work addresses the isolation of living under oppressive regimes. Nasr balances the harsh realities of societal stigma with the vital, joyful support systems found within close circles of friends, using imagination to bridge reality and hope.

In "Zero Feathers," Nicolás Bernal approaches the family archive as a site of decolonial protest and personal liberation. As a gender diverse member of the Pastos Indigenous People in Colombia, Bernal intervenes in family photographs to challenge hegemonic masculinity, religious fundamentalism, and plumofobia (femmephobia). The project demonstrates that sexual diversity is an ancestral, living dimension of Indigenous communities rather than a Western import. Through self-portraiture, Bernal transforms private trauma into a public, expanding rainbow of resistance, demanding epistemic justice and community memory.

Unapologetic joy and resilience across the passage of time shape Shirin Bhandari’s long-term documentary project "This Is My Life." Over the course of a decade, Bhandari has documented the life of Rey Ravago, a 66-year-old drag queen, street sweeper, and activist navigating poverty and aging in Metro Manila. Against the backdrop of the Philippines' stagnant anti-discrimination legislation, Ravago channels the glamour and confidence of gay icons to champion LGBTQ+ issues. The work highlights how older queer individuals rely on chosen families, emerging as a universal, triumphant celebration of strength in the margins.

Claudia Deganutti’s "Ruth e Billie" examines the psychological landscape of family tradition, dogma, and political hardening in rural Italy. Collaborating with her cousins, Deganutti chronicles their journeys of self-actualization as they navigate their sexual and gender identities within a conservative Catholic family. The intimate series reflects the intensifying marginalization faced by the Italian LGBTQIA+ community under recent far-right governance. By turning the coming out process into a shared, empathetic photographic journey, the project models resistance through radical vulnerability and familial truth telling.

Questions of digital intimacy and cultural diaspora are central to Jeremy Chih-Hao Chuang’s project "Ephemeral Intimacy." Rooted in his experience as a queer Southeast Asian navigating London’s contemporary dating culture, Chuang photographed men he met online within their private living spaces. By positioning himself as both participant and observer, he captures vulnerable, fleeting connections that challenge conventional heteronormative expectations. The work subtly interrogates how race, diaspora, and power dynamics influence desire, reclaiming the right to intimacy and connection in an increasingly atomized world.

The exhibition concludes with Yongjie Hu’s "Cake Boy," a nuanced exploration of intimacy, displacement, and familial silence. Tracking his relationship with his partner as they relocated from China to London, Hu uses portraits, still lifes, and staged photographs to map the fluid emotional states of queer connection. The work navigates the liberating physical distance of a new environment alongside the enduring emotional weight of expectations from the families left behind. Ultimately, Hu positions the act of facing oneself honestly and celebrating a tender, everyday love as one of the most powerful gestures of contemporary queer visibility.

Across experiences of theatrical critique, archival reclamation, domestic defiance, diaspora, and intergenerational resilience, these projects reveal the many ways queer realities are shaped by the worlds we inhabit. The exhibition invites viewers to consider queer agency beyond a static state and as an active negotiation where protest and joy meet to pave the way for collective liberation.