Oliver Doe

fotografie - performance - schilderen - schrijven - tekenen

Oliver Doe explores queer communication through varying levels of coding and abstraction. Research into use of colour, gesture, and other non-verbal lexicons as coded languages for cruising or signaling identity is central to this work, as well as the queer possibilities of abstraction within verbal language. With these works they are investigating Queer Linguistics and its (de)construction; queer uses of existing language; and abstracted and queered modes of interpersonal (and societal) communication. Considering repetition, indexing, code-switching and citation as the building blocks of (queer) language, their works modulate and bend these foundations to highlight the mobility and malleability of language in queer use. Doe's recent research has been focused on linguistic abstraction as a performative mode that can both construct and deconstruct the possibilities of queer identity categories, communicating desire or identity beyond language as we expect it.

You have to keep changing the way I address you, the way you address me - Oil on canvas, five panels, 140 x 200cm each

I move my hand like this, and you know - Oil on canvas, two panels, 140 x 200cm each

now it’s the same it’s different now you’ve changed the way you speak - Oil on canvas, three panels, 13 x 18cm each

Have you been here before? Have you been here before? - Oil on canvas, two panels, 13 x 18cm each

When you become comfortable, close your eyes - Oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm

If it goes, it goes, it goes - Oil on canvas, three panels, 30 x 40cm each. Held in a private collection