P. Staff

P. Staff makes film installations, performance art, and new media works Writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques describes Staff's site-specific exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries, “On Venus,” as the following: “Staff’s site-specific exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, ‘On Venus’, deals with biopolitics, looking at the ways in which exchanges between bodies, ecosystems and institutions affect human consciousness and behaviours – especially for queer, trans and non-binary people. A new video work also entitled On Venus, features two sections: the first presents warped archival footage of industrial farming for the production of meat, fur and hormones; the second features a poem about life on the uninhabitable planet Venus, conjuring a state of near-death that has parallels with trying to survive as a queer person in a heteronormative world. The surrounding installation impinges on the gallery itself, confronting entrants with a gargoyle weathered by acidic rain, a symbol of the worsening climate crisis, harshly lit against a reflective floor. The defamiliarizing effect of Staff's intervention rubs up against the history of the building, which was originally used as a gunpowder store. Pipes suspended from the ceiling leak acid into steel barrels, at once evoking chemical corrosion, the sharing of bodily fluids, and the uncontrollable, networked spread of viruses and data.” (Wikipedia) ...

Founded in 2010 by Guillaume Sultana, Sultana collaborates with emerging international artists. The gallery space operates as a site for experimentation and expression, often bringing together well-established and lesser known artists through a playful, yet politically-engaged curatorial program that highlights practices concerned with questions of identity and their social ramifications. By giving space to curators and writers, in addition to artists, the gallery is committed to rethinking the traditional modes of exhibition-making and collaboration within the art world. In 2021, Sultana opened Sultana Summer Set Arles to convene artists, collectors, curators, and friends close to the gallery in a domestic and intimate space in the heart of the city. This space was conceived as a residency and site of exchange, to host projects angled toward creative freedom, reflection, and flânerie that eschews a regular programming schedule, and is organized instead according to the whims and desires of our community. These two spaces exemplify the spirit of Sultana: the desire to provide artists with an independent platform for expression via site-specific projects and curatorial propositions. ...