with Francesc Ruiz, A Room of One’s Own: Lily Indie Press. Busan Biennale 2020
with Francesc Ruiz. A Room of One’s Own: Lily Indie Press. 2020. Installation. Busan Biennale. South Korea.
— Collaborated on research & worked on translation
Official Description from Busan Biennale 2020:
For the last twenty years, Francesc Ruiz has consistently developed and worked on projects that involve cartoons and comic strip cultures. It is not the traditional comic that serves a purpose of pure entertainment; Ruiz recognizes the comic book as aesthetic, structural, and intellectual substrate to look at and question the society and politics that surrounds him. Ruiz mirrors reality and reflects on sexuality, sexual fetishes, gender, identity, and LGTBIQ+ issues. Nothing is hidden, all sexual preferences are out in the open and displayed. Presenting his works as installations, comics, printed matter, and bookstores, Ruiz constantly looks for alternative ways of distributing the comics to disrupt regular systems. The awakening of historical sexual liberation movements can be found everywhere in his work, in which he generates a mash-up of genres, cultures, and historical references—from the Tijuana Bibles (porn parodies in comic format from 1930s to 60s) to Catecismos do Brasil (porn mini-comics from 1950s to 80s), from Italian Fumetti Erotici (erotic comicsfrom the mid-1960s to the 80s) to Japanese Yaoi (Boys Love manga genre created in the 1970s).
In 2010, Ruiz constructed a bookshop called *Gasworks Yaoi* at the exhibition space Gasworks in London. There he displayed work relating to the feminine subculture of Yaoi, which is a Japanese manga genre that depicts male to male romance and sex, all produced and consumed by women. Another example is Ruiz’s parasite comic bookstore installation in an already existing bookstore at the Momentum Biennial in Moss, Norway, in 2019. At House of Fun, Ruiz presented the subculture of alternative Hentai and explored radical sexual fetishes mainly focused on the male gaze, and made them available to the viewers. The alternative bookstore became a safe space to explore and share new ideas, sexual desires, and tested the limits of representation. Alternative distribution methods—by street venders, newsstands, hand-to-hand circulation—of printed matters are essential to Ruiz, because they are effective ways to share stories, make people aware of the city, and point to an alternative to main street consumerism. Ruiz challenges the existing architectural structures and constantly addresses individual, political, social, urban, and sexual norms. Ruiz creates spaces for subculture encounters where freedom of speech can be exercised, and where gender, sexuality, and identity can be shared and let loose.
프란체스크 루이즈, 〈자기만의 방: 백합 독립 출판〉, 2020. 부산 비엔날레. 대한민국
지난 20년간 프란체스크 루이즈는 카툰과 연재 만화 문화와 관련된 프로젝트들을 지속적으로 발전시켜 작업해왔다. 이것은 순수한 즐거움을 제공하는 전통적인 만화는 아니다. 루이즈는 더 나아가 만화책을 미학, 구조로서 그리고 그를 둘러싼 사회와 정치를 바라보며 질문을 던질 수 있는 지적인 기반으로서 만화의 형식을 빌려오고 작품을 제작한다. 프란체스크 루이즈는 현실을 거울처럼 비추며 섹슈얼리티, 성적 페티쉬, 젠더, 정체성, 그리고 LGBTIQ+ 이슈를 돌아보고자 한다. 숨겨져 있는 것은 없으며 모든 성적 선호는 드러나 열려 있고 전시된다. 그는 자신의 작업을 설치, 만화책, 인쇄물, 서점의 형태로 선보이며, 끊임없이 정상적 시스템을 분열시키기 위한 대안적인 방법을 찾고 있다. 프란체스크 루이즈의 작업 어디에서나 역사적 성 해방 운동이 준 깨달음을 찾아볼 수 있다. 그리고 그는 자신의 작업을 통해 여러 장르, 문화, 역사적 내용을 뒤섞는다. 이것은 ‘티후아나 바이블(Tijuana Bibles, 1930-60년대 만화에서 포르노 패러디 형식)’에서 ‘Catecismos do Brazil(1950-80년대의 소형 포르노 만화책)’까지, 이탈리아의 ‘푸메티 에로티치(Fumetti Erotici, 1960년대 중반에서80년대까지의 에로 만화책)’에서 일본의 ‘야오이(Yaoi, 1970년대에 생겨난 ‘보이즈 러브’ 장르 만화)’까지 이른다.