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mo Futures (1999) is a visual artist, photographer and writer. Personal and public archives play a central role in their practice. In the self-portrait Bizarre Beauty (2024), mo Futures brings together various elements from their own archive: photographs, poetry in the form of computer code, and components of digital devices. They depict themself as a cyborg; a hybrid of human and machine.
mo Futures’ relationship with the digital is complex and layered. For many years, online worlds were the only spaces in which they – as an Afropean, queer and trans person – found recognition, affirmation and community. At the same time, the artist is acutely aware of the negative sides of technology, such as the extraction of raw materials that leads to conflict, violence, and the exploitation of both people and the environment.
A major source of inspiration for Bizarre Beauty was the book Every Where Alien (2024) by poet, writer and performance artist Brad Walrond. In this poetry collection, Walrond explores his own Blackness, queerness and desires. He reflects on the concept of the ‘alien’, and examines how feelings of estrangement can bring one closer to an understanding of shared humanity. The title of mo Futures’ collage refers to the Bazaar/Bizarre category in ballroom culture, where performers strive to look as alien and ‘non-human’ as possible. While people of colour and queer people have historically been dehumanized, here they reclaim the ‘more than human’ as an expansion of identity and a form of beauty. Through these references, mo Futures’ multimedia collage engages not only with technology and identity, but also with freedom, oppression, alienation and the emancipatory power of beauty.
Written by Sarah van Binsbergen