Sheppard’s three channel video work follows a multi-layered and looping narrative of desire, identity and eco-crisis. Performed by Séamus Gallagher and Marley O’brien the work draws on the performers own ideas of apocalypse and loss, as well as their (re)performances of historical and pop references. Embodied ecologies of bacteria, choirs of buzzing electrons, minerals in human drag, these performers navigate their own destabilizing identities in relation to their destabilizing climate. Queer familiars, not-quite human, these metametazoa enact a queer ecology, questioning the boundaries and permeabilities of humans, rethinking the ideology of individualism, and exploring networks of collectivism, community, reciprocity and care. Exquisite Corpse, a children’s game where one child draws a head and the next a body, and the next legs and feet, is used as a metaphor for hybridized, non-binary and collective embodiments that emerge from this queer ecological approach.

These images are shown from the exhibition Walking Talking Minerals by Lou Sheppard and Laura Pold, at Titanik Gallery in Turku, Finland.

All photos by Johanna Naukkarinen