The weekend kicked off with an art exhibition in the Villa Vida Cafe featuring 10 TIN* artists, showing various forms of art from installations to prints to mixed media, we had it all. You can check out the pieces and the artists on the Visible! Instagram page

“So, maybe let’s mention first the writing. The writing was like the kickstarter. Basically I saw a competition from a local shopping centre. They had like organised in this nearby city, crime stories, and they had, you should write a short story and you had like half a page and from that you should write further, and I was like 12 or 13 and I sent it in. And out of 50 stories that were sent in, I was chosen first place, so that started my head with short stories. But like everything I do, it’s not like a continuous work, but like short brackets where I do it really, really intensely and obsess about it until I’m just done or get distracted. And yeah, that’s like basically, the story of the Swallowers universe. So that’s my main writing that developed over the years. It’s basically since seven years. Six, let’s say six years then. I’m like, yeah, just one more story and I have my first anthology finished. Or I just need to finish that up and it ended up that I have like 20 or more finished stories from 2 pages, to one is 65 word pages. Which are all in this fictional, science fiction universe. So it’s based on ours, but like way in the future and stuff, and all from space opera to cosmic horror, everything. Every idea.”

This is an excerpt from The Queer Truth Episode 5, listen to the full episode here. 

“Denise: How do you sort of negotiate this space of like who you are, your identity, and how much of that you want to put in your art? How much of that you want to put into the story behind your art, right?

Erik: I don’t particularly try to, but then it happens anyway. The Love Like Us comic is more autobiographical than what I usually do, or at least I say that because it’s, it is easy to spot what what’s going on there. But I think, I don’t know. I can’t help it. Even if I look back at the things that I used to do back before I even came out and everything. It’s still very. If I had paid attention more to my art, maybe I would have realised something earlier, but I didn’t. So I can’t help it. I tried to keep it anonymous in the sense that I would. I don’t want to tell my story because first of all, I don’t think it’s that interesting, you know. And second, that’s a bit too personal I think to just then show friends –that terrifies me. I can show strangers. There’s this is great post online, something about like here’s something I made and I’m happy to show the entire world and every stranger on the planet except my close friends and family. You stay away because it’s, I don’t know. It’s very, very personal. Sometimes maybe reveals what I really think of some people, so not great. But I think since I started to know myself better, my art has gotten better because I include also biographical things about me in it, and that’s good. I think it is good. And I used to think, well, nobody cares about my story, but then. I guess they do.”

This is an excerpt from The Queer Truth Episode 4, listen to the full episode here.

“I created that character to tell these stories, and it’s a cat because everybody likes cats and then I can say some serious stuff and then people will still be receptive. So, in a sweet way I talk about some serious things. My art, I’m a visual artist primarily that’s what I studies and I what I did commercially for a long time and then I started writing when I was introduced to zines and independent publishing. So that was sort of an interesting development. Visual art is more effecting emotions and it was very symbolic, I was using a lot of symbols and somehow visual art is very powerful but not so direct. But when you write, when you use words in a particular way that has a much stronger impact I think. I was always inspired by nature, maybe this a universal thing, every painter we think of the whole universe, it is sort of a very zoomed out perspective. As I’m a migrant and a queer person I started having these experiences that I somehow had to turn into a story. That’s how I started writing and that’s also how I came out as a trans person through writing and sort of found my voice.”

This is an excerpt from The Queer Truth Episode 4, listen to the full episode here.