a body of work is just a body

a portrait of lou sullivan

o+c+s

faggots are complex beings


just like love


attic space ship



a body of work is just a body


a body of work is just a body is the first part of a larger production of texts around the transformative power, politics and limits of practices of body-modification, including those of tattoo, transition and decay. in this text, i talk about the affects and effects of tattooing my faher for two years and twenty tattoos.  

what does it mean to apply, again and
again, everlasting results of my queer
labor onto my father’s skin? what does
the new financial relation that binds us
in this commercial transaction change or re-affirm of our faher-son relationship? what familial and gendered hierarchies do we disrupt, if any? do we create new ones? who’s profiting off of who? 

is this what allyship looks like?

trust, ego , boundaries. 
touch, pain,satisfaction.

is this payback? is this love?

isn’t getting a tattoo quite like going to the
shrink? well, if that’s true, i might have
embarked on an unplanned family
therapy journey with my father. 

what’s best, i’m taking you with me.
For “Tattoo Marathon”, an assembly of people to practice tattoo as a queer community health technology. With community tattooing, we aim to take control over our bodies, our experiences of pain and pleasure, and our approaches to harm reduction.
performance
60’
athens museum of queer art
2023

I’m sitting on my stool, he’s laying on the table.
Everything neatly organised before the mess begins.
Are you ready - to open up?
A question addressed to mind and skin alike.
A confirmation and I’m going in.
A soft buzzing noise as the third character in the scene, voltage translated into frequencies.
We have everything here, solids, liquids and intangible.
Cups hold inks, fingers hold machine, furniture holds bodies.
Flesh holds all it’s given.

a portrait of lou sullivan


powerpoint and invitation to collective reading of fragments of “we both laughed in pleasure: the selected diaries of lou sullivan”. lou’s words are our vessel to visit a specific relation to hiv and aids, as a transformative and formative experience for a gay trans man during the peak of the epidemic in san francisco. 

performance

buda kunstcentrum
2023




faggots are complex beings

I unwrap the box and place its contents in front of me. Three little Barbie doll clothes, followed by their human-sized replicas. 

The miniature clothes were found during a walk; reproducing them on my own scale was an obvious choice: to bring a certain childlike magic back to adulthood, through soft, colorful, shiny fabrics; to stage a recurring moment in lives lived within the spectrum of gender non-conformity, when the passage to adulthood is also a passage to heteronormativity. The suspicion that emerges around certain attitudes, attractions to certain colors or textures modulates a specific experience of shame. 

This installation asks: what did you have to leave behind when you grew up? Could it come back to you?  
performance
kunsthalle pompei
2021

o+c+s


Chloé and Oscar's encounter happened with a collaboration: the latter asked the other for a device to present textile works, then returned the favour by sewing a cushion for a sculpture of hers. Between metal and fabric, the sharpness of tips and the delicacy of satin, they designed this exhibition as the testament of a fortunate companionship between two extremes. Somewhere in the center of this, they moved propelled by their shared liking of dogs, embodied during the whole exhibition by the presence of Salem, Chloé’s pup. 

This gave life to a porous collaboration, a dialogue between two worlds opposed in everything - but violence, binding them together as a raw material.




duo show
with chloé arrouy
putsch gallery
brussels
2021







Oscar Mathieu le Bussy is a faggot. At the moment, he’s trying to make something out of the ambiguity of this identity where pleasure & danger are entwined. Here come little houses for protection, little dogs for companions, shiny clothes for becoming who we already are.

He aims to suggest, through this multidisciplinary practice, clues that possess the power to recount a complex & intimate narrative. Art is viewed as a means to create bonds, to address a public in its core knowledge of something shared.

Feeling a sense of risk in unveiling oneself, as well as an urgency to do so, he uses cuteness and childlike imagery for their capacity of emotional honesty & visual delight.

From a technical standpoint, he’s forever curious of new mediums, always learning, rejecting mastery. But wherever he goes - sewing, drawings, sculpting, tattooing… - the body is always present, pleasured or hurting, cared for or caring.


just like love
solo exhibition of drawings
gallery that’s what x said
brussels
18.10.2024 01.12.2024
For his first exhibition at that’s what x said, Oscar Mathieu le Bussy presents a new series of dreamlike drawings inhabited by pointy-eared creatures. These stylised beings, somewhere between fairies, goblins and angels, are sometimes portrayed in moments of intimacy and sharing, and sometimes kept at a distance on paper. The bodies, adorned with wings, heeled shoes or scars, bear clues to their own histories; these are sometimes accompanied by recurring elements such as chains, butterflies or stars, whose composition seems to formulate a still mysterious symbolism.

For several years now, Oscar has been developing his drawing practice through tattooing – stencils affixed to the walls are areminder of this influence and open up adialogue between the two mediums in the gallery space. The constraint of flash production (a motif offered as is to the client) allows the artist to find his own aesthetic language, marked by colour, enchantment and the presence of characters with magical allure. For this exhibition, Oscar is reworking this register in a search for harmony between his usual instinctive line and the increasing complexity of his images, by experimenting with new textures, colours and compositions. As a counterpoint to these colourful works, he also unveils a series of erotic graphite drawings, full of nuance and detail. Whether on a thematic or visual level, the artist seeks above all to take pleasure in creating and offering images that are pleasant, comforting or exciting.

attic space ship











a friend and i took over the attic of my mother’s barn, situated somewhere in the wallonian countryside, to create an exhibition together as well as a meal to share with our friends and visitors. both of us have strong emotional ties to rurality and this space served as a cataclyst for experimentations in our practices, in our own individual ways. 

to me, the place was charged of familial and personal history, and i saw an occasion to interact and reprogram ambivalent traces of childhood. a large patchworked fabric becomes a family portrait, a limp wristed body is squished in an enclave of the house, couples of dogs and bunnies feel out of place but look happy... 










duo exhibition & activation
mom’s barn
2021