Makda Iyasu (b. 1985) is a London-based artist, photographer and filmmaker. Iyasu’s documentary and ethnographic works foreground communities from across the globe, including queer cultures from Brazil and the UK. Having worked in a range of production and creative direction settings, Iyasu developed a unique, seductive visual language that conveys socially charged topics in a playful and radical way.
Iyasu presented her works
Candid Interiors,
Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery, Redchurch Street, Oct 2012
Candid Interiors,
Öff-beat // Hoxton Docks, Shoreditch, Dec 2012
Candid Inferiors,
George and Dragon, Shoreditch, Dec 2012
Juliana Sissons, Visionary Knitwear,
Fashion & Textile Museum, Bermondsey Street, Jan 2015
The Third Space,
Ridley Road Social Club, Dalston, Oct 2020
Multimedia Encounters,
Multimedia Anthropology Lab, UCL, Virtual, Feb 2021
360 Dome Cinema Screening of The Third Way Film, 2020
Chillout Culture (2012 - 2020) comprises photographs that capture the rarely seen world of the closeness and intimacy of London’s queer community. The series is an intimate document of hyperlocal party scenes maintained by shared senses of escapism.
Welcome to The Third Space, an immersive exhibition by artist and filmmaker Makda Iyasu.
Makda’s work incorporates over ten years of documentary work, constitutes a sustained ethnographic investigation into deconstructed gender identities, working with communities who sought to carve out other concepts of gender and create spaces where alternative gender identities can be lived and explored freely.
These spaces that Makda has explored - which broader society considered marginal - perform important cultural work. They provide spaces where established social concepts can be challenged, and where alternative visions of society can be experimented with and enacted. These spaces open up different possibilities of what society can be, and who we can be, and the roles we can play within it, and as a result, they offer us new visions of a future that are not defined by the constraints of the past.
Through Makda’s sustained exploration of these spaces, we can learn about more than just the deconstruction of gender. By exploring communities that have sought to challenge accepted social identities such as man, woman, and the societal expectations that come with them. Makda offers insights into how other social categories and identity roles can be questioned and rethought.
The Third Space immerses and invites you to consider the other spaces which remain undefined that can be carved out at the interstices of thought, and which can offer new ways with which to think about the society that we live in, and the future society that we are all creating.
Raffaella Fryer-Moreira
UCL Multimedia Anthropology Lab
Bathroom Stories (2010 - 2012) is a 30-minute documentary video installation portraying women intimately sharing stories and opinions whilst bathing. The women range in backgrounds, ages, and fields of creativity, and include Princess Julia, Cozette McCreery, Billie JD Porter, Harriet Verney, Bella Gladman, Venus X, Scarlette Carlos Clark, Angel Rose. Each woman contributing to the series brings forth a different personality whilst maintaining a true sense of self. The series showcases the multiplicity of characteristics that make each woman intensely unique.
Mx Chiquita (2018 - 2020) is an 11-minute silent film that tries to document a queer movement in contemporary Brazil. A story about a party of over 40 years of resistance in a climate of hatred.
The Third Way Room (2019 -2020) 360-degree 6-minute film with a spatial audio soundtrack. Conceptual presentation shifting notions of sex, sexuality, and physicality. Playing with heteronormative ideals
CONTENT CREATION
CASTINGS
DESIGN + DIGITAL
PHOTOGRAPHY + VIDEO
Sacred and Profane meet.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
On the second Sunday of October, more than two million Catholic pilgrims descend in Belem, Pará, for the procession of Our Lady of Nazareth. After the procession, tens of thousands of queers, drag queens, and the trans community celebrate it up at the Chiquita Party in celebration of pride.
Transamazonia is an intimate look at an undocumented queer movement in contemporary Brazil. Now titled Mx Chiquita and currently being produced into a documentary series about decolonizing queer bodies and identities.
Bathroom Stories is a superb example of aesthetic values disorder. By immersing yourself in this intimate place par excellence (number two behind the toilet) but open to the general public by these great voyeurs that are photographers and filmmakers. What becomes of the body in this paradox of manufactured naturalness, of the intimate revealed, of controlled letting go? A questioning of the body is both ridiculous and an object of worship. The body, this pure mechanics that have become art, Makda Iyasu has not finished mistreating it and sending it back to what Lacan could have called a signifier that has become signified.
AURÉLIEN POIRSON-ATLAN
MAKDA IYASU
Across photography and video, Makda's transgressions of the traditional boundaries of media and culture reflect the many facets of her own artistic formation. Makda creatively applies multimedia, champions talent, and creates memorable digital experiences.
CASTING DIRECTION
MAKDA IYASU
Scouting interesting engaging people with a story to tell. Collaborated with vast networks to cast the best talent for specific roles in various productions.
DESIGN+ MARKETING
MAKDA IYASU
Makda's expertise lies in combining creativity and insights applied from in-depth knowledge and networks to market brands and startups working in the competitive digital space.