Slanted House is a collective of artists and writers based in Berlin that supports queer and POC creators who challenge the restraints of the contemporary art and publishing worlds.
Its creators, B (American writer Beatrice Duncan), Roo (British-Indian artist Ruhi Parmar Amin), and Katya (Russian artist Ekaterina Costa), come from artistic backgrounds that branch into philosophy, fine art, conceptual art, and writing. Fresh out of university, they noticed a lack of space for young artists to exhibit their work, their perspectives, and their identities.
We chat below about the collective, the artist community in Berlin, and what’s in store for Slanted House.
What is the story and mission behind Slanted House?
Ruhi Parmar Amin (UK) and B Duncan (USA) moved to Berlin in October of 2017 and started Slanted House in January. Katya Costa (USA, RUS) joined soon after. We all met in Paris where we did our undergraduate studies. Each of us went on to focus on different spheres of the arts: Katya in book design and fine art photography, Ruhi in fine art installations, text and cooker, and B in philosophy and writing. So far we have worked with writers and artists from the USA, UK, Russia, Venezuela, Norway, France, Brazil, Syria, Pakistan and Mexico.
Slanted House came from our desire to create a space for fellow artists and writers in our community. Coming out of university, we noticed that the people around us were making amazing work but that there wasn’t an accessible platform to showcase their projects. Regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality or artistic practice, we do not discriminate our represented artists and the people who submit to be part of our zines and shows. We are dedicated to being inclusive and always take the time to review everything we receive. Slanted House is a means to invigorate and legitimize our community. We want to build a network of other creators whose work doesn’t fit within the conventional demands of the art and publishing worlds. We offer space via our gallery shows, our printed zine, and our platform for readings and performances. We aim to stick by our motto, to be ‘a white wall, a lit stage and an open door’.
Overall view of Slanted House gallery exhibition ‘these here spilt voices’. Photo by Ruhi Parmar Amin.
How many shows have you had so far? And I’m curious how you select your artists?
Slanted House aims to provide a platform for underrepresented emerging artists and writers, emphasizing queer voices. Our launch exhibition opened on February 24, 2018 at Circle 1 Gallery in Berlin. This show, titled ‘these here spilt voices’, consisted of a multimedia art exhibition, readings and performances. The artists involved were from all over the world as we said earlier.
The first edition of our Zine also launched at the event, parallel to readings and performances by the writers and artists involved; the Zine was full of photography, artwork, critical essays and poetry. Each of our Zines are in conversation with the work in our exhibitions — they are a way for the dialogues and questions in the exhibition to permeate outside the gallery space.
We formulate a question every time we are planning a new show and Zine, therefore the works and people are selected depending on the nuanced angle and power of their response to the initial question. We aim to have a diverse group of artists and writers involved every time.
What do you think of the ‘art scene’ in Berlin?
Berlin is not only an international city, but it is also far more affordable than other major European capitals (although that is changing) therefore you see more people being given the chance to seize on the luxury of dedicating most of their time to their artistic practice. The art scene here is also a great place to create as a queer person. There are so many safe and accepting spaces — with Slanted House we wanted to add to that energy as a queer focused collective.
The history of Berlin has intertwined so beautifully with multiple forms of art and writing. The street art, traditional art and also contemporary/conceptual gallery spaces represent an abundance of emotions and experiences; this inevitably helps us as a collective greatly as we are able to cater our shows and zines to such a multi-faceted and fractured city.
Your first zine focused on the topic “what does it mean to be a contemporary artist?” What prompted this exploration, and what did you discover from this exercise?
We wanted to start a dialogue with the artists about how they assimilate, or dissimulate, from their identities. We were curious how fellow creators face their work and themselves in an ever-shifting cultural climate. Each piece in the show, and each entry in the Zine, were an attempt to answer the question. We found that many of the answers or explorations showed us that as the artists face their identities in a contemporary context, more questions arose.
We saw, for example, Walker Greene’s work face their non-binary trans femme identity via playful but hard hitting painted posters that read, ‘equality makes me horny’, ‘god loves fags’ and a buttplug inverted as a vase holding flowers. Their work applied the question to their own life and identity, but also prompted a reaction from many people at the show — cis, straight and queer people alike.
Overall, we ended up with a beautiful cacophony of voices drawn out from text-based installations, photography, sculpture and painting. The show successfully portrayed how by simply providing a platform for young artists and writers, their stories and identities were given a chance to breathe and be shared.
Photograph of Walker Greene’s installation piece (posters on wall) and Judy McNicol installation (clothes rack) at ‘these here spilt voices’. Photo by Ruhi Parmar Amin.
What projects and/or events are coming up?
We are currently in the process of finalizing a date for our next show in the fall, which will take place at Hopscotch in Berlin. They are a book store, reading room and event space. We are hoping to curate a small art exhibit inside the space as well as distribute the second issue of our Zine. The theme of the next exhibition and Zine is ‘Queer Surfaces’.
Slanted House would like to analyze what a ‘queer surface’ is by pivoting the use of both ‘queer’ and ‘surface’ from nouns to verbs. We delve into the complex layers of identity, in between-ness, memory, and dispersed locality. We use the human body and the act of seeing and touch to engage in a praxis that shifts the conventional dialogues we have with surfaces.
A queer surface is one where the subject challenges traditional use of a space and time as a way to proliferate interlocutors — in whispers, in glances, in sighs, or in words. These surfaces reflect the transitory nature that art and writing have assumed in contemporary culture: as impermanent words in an unsaved document or as an ephemeral tag on the yellow rush of an u-bahn door only to be painted over before nightfall. Queer surfaces are not limited to the flimsy articulations that language offers, queer surfaces are the unnamed entities we search to define.
This being said, we are currently open for submissions for both the exhibition and the Zine’s second issue! E-mail us at: [email protected].
How can people get involved?
We are open for submissions for our upcoming zine on the aforementioned topic — all mediums are welcome. We are also very open to future collaborations for events and exhibitions in all cities: we love being part of an international community. We are interested in conceptualizing our exhibitions from their contents to their curation in collaboration with new and interesting people, so artist-run spaces, residencies or collaborative publications are all of interest to us.
The best way to contact us is either via our email: [email protected] OR via our Instagram direct messages: @theslantedhouse. Our website is also now up and running!
Please visit slantedhousecollective.com for more information.
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