The catalyst for the work was a desire to give back to the queer community which I have found here in Glasgow. Growing up in Sweden, I barely realized what an impact the total lack of these kinds of queer familial relations had on my well-being. In Glasgow, people embraced the diversity of the other. I felt free to explore and deconstruct myself, safe in the arms of the community.

As most of my queer relationships were informed or forged around music (clubs/jams/dance/etc.), I wanted to make seven of my most valued queer family members instruments. These wouldn’t be instruments in the traditional sense, rather they would be boxes (or bodies) that held objects I had come to associate with each subject – a portrait, let’s say. Each of the subjects then recorded using their instrument, without any knowledge of its contents. My hope was for each person to, through the performance and the box, reflect on what things they associate with themselves; why our relationship is significant; and what I or others might associate with them. Increasingly I have come to realize that home is not just a place for the family, but for all of the family’s things, which help them identify and construct their realities.

The recordings were where the piece finally came together. Each participant brought their own energy and style to the performance, which reflected why I had chosen them in the first place. There was a range of emotions grafted onto the reflective surfaces of each box. It was then they truly became portraits, as each box now held the actions and feelings of the subjects.

Throughout my degree, I have been interested in how to bridge the gap between audience and artist. I do not want my art to be seen or experienced as precious or untouchable, rather I want it to be an invitation for the audience to interact with it and to make art themselves. By using discarded materials (which I believe most visibly wear their histories on their sleeves) I have tried to make the art appear less dear or fragile, to make the audience come closer, to bridge the gap. The audience, in my eyes, is equal to the artist in the making process. Without an audience, art would lose half its meaning. Nowhere is this more apparent than in non-fine art contexts, such as clubs, where, for example, the DJ requires the audience as much as the audience requires the DJ. There is communication there, unlike most gallery experiences. But it doesn’t have to be this way: galleries can make us come together too.