Decolonoscopy
2025 / Critical Design
This multimedia installation interrogates the discursive understanding of queer bodies and identities within a social process of abjection. It situates queerness across socio-economic systems and cultural narratives, drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject as both a lens through which to read social exclusion and a tool for transitioning between dominant narratives.
Resembling a human anus, the installation confronts viewers through its provocative materiality and interaction. The viewer’s position heightens bodily awareness and removes them from passive spectatorship into the spectacle, making them more involved in the discourse. The anus operates as a symbol of unproductive queerness and as a site of non-heterosexual, non-reproductive pleasure. Inside the installation, a video performance is projected in which I use my own queer body as a medium to subvert dominant narratives. By re-examining my physical identity, I position the queer body as a site of research through which discursivity within the queer self is explored. The performance is accompanied by readings of The Southern Butthole Manifesto (Pedra Costa, 2023), performed by queer voices from the Global South.
This installation forms part of the undergraduate thesis project Decolonoscopy: Abject Queerness Towards Postcapitalist Discourse, which was recognised as the Best Undergraduate Thesis in IE University’s Bachelor in Design Class of 2025. The project was selected for presentation at Dutch Design Week 2025 and is part of the permanent collection at United Cowboys Art House in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Read the entire dissertation here.
For the following images, viewer discretion is advised.
Installation piece - Material exploration with human hair, latex, and spices
Video performance - Watch full performance here