We are very happy to announce that Sofia Queer Forum 2018 will be curated by Mohammad Salemy and Patrick Schabus.
This year’s forum is titled HOMELAND FOR THE VAGABOND and will take place in the period November 8 – December 2, 2018, at Vaska Emanouilova Gallery and other locations in Sofia.
SOFIA QUEER FORUM 2018: HOMELAND FOR THE VAGABOND will focus on the following key questions: How are the concepts of “queer” and "queer identity" changing during a time of increasing austerity, deregulation, poverty, growing racism, nationalisms (including homo-nationalism), social segregation and discrimination? Can these concepts be rethought as part of larger emancipatory social movements? Can new queer movements and discourses contribute to the collective and universal struggle for better life and equal political and social rights for all, or they will remain limited by the queer category’s identitarian legacies?
Mohammad Salemy is an independent New York based artist, critic, and curator who holds an MA in critical curatorial studies from the University of British Columbia. He has shown his works in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works 7 (Beirut) and Witte de With (Rotterdam). His writings have been published in e-flux, Flash Art, Third Rail, and Brooklyn Rail, and he has curated exhibitions at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Access Gallery, and Satellite Gallery in Vancouver as well as Transit Display in Prague. In 2014, he organized the Incredible Machines conference. Salemy’s curatorial experiment “For Machine Use Only” was included in the 11th edition of Gwangju Biennale (2016). He currently co-organizes the education programs at The New Centre for Research & Practice.
Patrick Schabus is an independent Berlin based artist, filmmaker and curator who holds an MA in visual arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He has shown his works in Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), Künstlerhaus Wien and the Grazer Kunstverein. Schabus' films have been shown in international film festivals like Anifilm, Animex and Animateka, Viennale, and the Vienna Independent Film Festival. His writings have been published in engagée, Malmoe, and artmagazine.cc. From 2015 until 2018 he was the director curator of the Mandelkern project. In 2017 he was awarded the honorary prize of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
SOFIA QUEER FORUM 2018: HOMELAND FOR THE VAGABOND is financially supported by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe and Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art.
