if i was adam i would have eaten the apple first
"if i was adam i would have eaten the apple first" (2025) is a multi-media solo exhibition that is composed
both as an installation as a narrative experience about the theme of desire in a queer male homo-erotic
context. it features videos, performances, texts, digital collages, prints, photography, ai-generated
images (with midjourney 5).
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this exhibition was born from my desire to express queerness and its consequent desire. it
started after one semester in chicago, where i had the opportunity to get to meet an extremely
prolific lgbtq+ community (and a bigger number of queer men compared to zurich or even switzerland),
the result is an interest in queerness as an artistic subject, a fascination to homoeroticism,
a study of my own body through queer lenses. it opened back some conversation that i held with
my family about my sexual identity, my gender expression, what it means in the world. those conversations
are also present in the installation, through letters written to my mom, to videos where we feature together
on the theme of understanding each other (despite radically different points of view), or a video where i
take a twist on a video about "gender ideology" that i received from my mother.
in this exhibition there is a main theme (which works as a fil-rouge too): desire. from having
desire, to being the victim of someone else’s desire. fascination with the male body, the difficulty
of resisting the temptation. in the exhibition i talk about themes of lust, of sacrificing time,
energy, identity, integrity, to fulfill that sin. in the exhibition i talk about the weight of being
used by other people to satisfy their desire, not always with my consent. i find extremely interesting
the interconnectivity of using and being used, consuming and being consumed, allowing
yourself to be consumed to have someone to consume, objectify and being objectified.
the imperativeness that desire has taken in my life has inspired the naming of the exhibition too.
i want you to consider this exhibition as a single artwork that all goes to the context of one project,
i consider these works all supporting each other and so i think it would be unfair to separate
them in the context of this exhibition.
another video that you will be able to see in the installation has been described by some as a main
statement of the piece. it's a video where i strip, slowly but painfully, while text of thoughts, questions,
doubts regarding the themes of the exhibition appear on screen, faster and faster while i strip. the video
is advised for an audience older than 18 and features themes of sexual assault and male nudity. viewer
discretion is advised.
you can find it by clicking here.
during the opening "fuck boy" was also performed. it's a performance tackling the theme of sexual assault,
specifically the ones that i have lived first hand, through exclusion and objectification. it all takes
the formula of the scenario of men showing each other photos of the bodies of women they slept with,
but in this performance i excluded most of the audience and showed pictures to a selected lite. these
photos represent my true personal experiences, positive but also negative.
in the exhibition you can see a documentation of a performance "a monologue that makes no sense", where i
recite from my phone several sentences that appear disconnected, but they are the messages i have sent on
dating apps in the span of a week ordered in chronological order (without including the responses). the room
is also dominated by a big print, it's a collage of several naked or semi-naked pictures i have made in front
of my mirror, including elements of my body that i find appealing to the male gaze to create a mythical
creature of "perfection". the size and placement support this idea of dimension, making the viewer feel smaller.
inspired by a painting in the kunsthaus (zh), its placement has the viewer's eyesight at the height of the
hips, inviting a sense of inferiority and of sexual (oral) duties to the figure.
several works are composed by a compilation of different images. in one, you can see hundreds of first
frame of homo-erotic solo male webcam videos filmed 10 to 15 years ago (and archived by others). images that
are hunting, erotic, solitary. the performers are clothed, but soon vulnerable and a spectacle, are waiting, they
might become rich, nobody might see them, but they are there. the images are accompanied by a poem that i wrote.
you will also be able to see what to me is the transposition of the app 'grindr': an imaginary (but digital)
mud where anonymous (ai-generated) men are melted into each other, drowning each-other in the process. with
every few frames, the men are transforming, mutating, changing with almost identical copies of each other.
another screen shows images displayed through a carousel slide projector (kodak carousel) with images of
queer families in formal and happy contexts from the years 1960s to '80s. observing better, one will be able
to notice that these images are not real, but have deformed hands, plastic skins, incorrect faces: they are
ai: generated. these joyous memories hide a sad truth: even if these stories are part of fiction and our
collective imagery, images like these were not possible in the past. with this ready-made i want to
challenge our fetishized and commodified image of the past. like the subjects’ hands, their identity can be
read as mistake, the result of a technological reinterpretation of the past. artificial intelligence today
is able to create false testimonies, believable images, lies in very few seconds. to give to ai the keys of
the storytelling of the past means exposing ourselves only to the stories and appearances of the group of
people that was the most photographed: white, wealthy, male. despite race, wealth and gender not being
specified in the generation prompt.
in a personal conversation with tacita dean, she offered a solution to the conflict between art and ai:
the use of the analog. these words have then become a fixation: i want to overturn, obfuscate, mix them.
so, then i play with these conflicting concepts and i transform them in a single artwork, images that are
both analog as they are ai generated.
the works are installed in a room that features feeble lighting but spots on the works. they are isolated,
in the dark. the layout of the room (shaped like a rectangular donut) allows a more guided storytelling,
so as a curator i was able to make sure that the visitors don't see specific works before they see others.
structurally then, you would see works showing me as the perpetrator of desire: the most narcissistic,
lustful, erotic. you would then see a video (with red colours) where i directly tell the perpetrator
of a sexual assault act what they did to me (and the consequences that it had on me). this then
recontextualizes the past works, i was not only a promoter of the system, but the victim of its most
extreme act. you continue in the circle and see other lustful works and interpret them differently as
if you would have seen them first.
if i was adam i would have eaten the apple first. with works and curation by gal.
i would like to thank all the people that have helped me for the exhibition, including kiki, nathan, stefano,
gaëlle, renzo, orit, erez, alon, daniele, swetlana, monster, alexandra, tarek, billy, rubi, isabel,
franziska, zsusanna, anna, emily, robi, saskia, ian, sonja, adi, cecile, fayrouz, zizou, and many more.