SLQS Gallery, 20 Club Row, E2 7EY
RSVP
6-7:30pm
Bex Wade is joined by Emily Steer to discuss photography, activism, and queer identity in their practice, as part of their solo exhibition I Know Who I Am By Being With You at SLQS Gallery. Over the past 20 years, Wade has documented the queer community across spaces of nightlife, protest and the global pride movement. Drawing on the queer gaze as a critical framework, they interrogate practices of visibility and witnessing. The conversation will explore personal and collective archives as acts of political resistance, positioning their work within the queer art canon.
This event is free but RSVP is essential.
Please note that the gallery is located on the second floor and only accessible by stairs.
Bex Wade (they/them) is a UK-based trans non-binary artist and photographer. Wade documents queer lives with a focus on power, complexity and defiance, capturing moments of joy, rage, communion and resistance. Their practice builds an archive of contemporary queer experience that insists on visibility, survival and self-determination. Wade's work seeks to challenge dominant narratives of gender and identity, explicitly highlighting how queer people reshape their worlds. Their images resist the assumptions of cis-heteronormativity, offering a vision of multiplicity, kinship and refusal. Their current focus is documenting overlooked queer narratives, centering trans lives and communities who are marginalised within LGBTQIA+ spaces.
Wade is the first trans artist to be displayed permanently by the Victoria & Albert Museum, after five of Wade’s photographs were acquired by the V&A in 2023. Three of these photographs are available as Limited Editions of 15 in this exhibition.
Emily Steer is a London-based arts and culture journalist. She was online editor and then editor of biannual art magazine Elephant, and has written for titles including AnOther, BBC Culture, Elle, the Financial Times, Frieze, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Style Magazine, Tank and Wallpaper. Her writing often explores the intersection of art and mental health. She is currently training to be a psychodynamic psychotherapist.