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