Balaclava.Q (pronounced baləˈklävə-dot-q), is an international queer visual art project and collective which connects, promotes, and creates platforms for queer artists. All of which is part of an overarching strategy to promote queer contemporary art — and in turn increase audience for the works and artists. Currently, there are almost 400 artists from across the globe who have contributed content to this digital archive of queer contemporary art.

The strategy currently consists of three tactics: Tactic One: Obscuring The Face, in which artists are allowed the freedoms contained within anonymity, so that artists may create honest reflections of queer concerns. Tactic Two: HIVideo, which is an international screening of art films that reckon with HIV/AIDS screened simultaneously across 4 continents, every year on World AIDS Day (December 1st), and finally, Tactic Three: Abstract Activism, a kind of cover-all tactic which proposes to artists that the very act of being visible is activism.

Visit Balaclava.Q here: https://linktr.ee/balaclava.q

Recent successes include ongoing partnership between Balaclava.Q and the USA-based Queer Art Network. In 2017 we showcased works by over 70 artists in the exhibition HE: QUESTIONING AND QUEERING “MASCULINITY”  in Los Angeles, USA. Co-curated by myself and Robert Summers, PhD. The exhibition consisted of two fundamental elements, namely photography and film and included works by artists such as, Florian Hetz, Slava Mogutin, Matt Lambert, Gio Black Peter and Ron Kibble. This year I am delighted that this strategic partnership continues with the upcoming exhibition QUEERING THE SOUTH.  It will make visible queer art and videos in the South of the United States, specifically Alabama, which is notoriously anti-queer and LGBT+. With this in mind, we, the curators see this exhibition as an extremely politico-aesthetic tactic to make visible what is elided or erased in Alabama and the rest of the South.

Recent press include:

DAZED DIGITAL: https://www.out.com/out-exclusives/2017/12/01/hivideo-exhibits-14-works-international-queer-artists-world-aids-day

OUT.COM: https://www.out.com/out-exclusives/2017/12/01/hivideo-exhibits-14-works-international-queer-artists-world-aids-day

1. All LGBT+ Communities
2. Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnicities
3. Men
4. Non-UK Residents
5. People over 50
6. People with disabilities
7. Women