Publication, 2026
Collages, poems, book covers, wall signs edited by VASKOS
Limited bilingual edition of 120 signed copies
The publication utilized books from our personal library, photographs taken on site, collages with beloved verses and male bodies from old issues of the erotic magazine LOOK.
The publication is part of the visual arts work of the same name created by VASKOS in the context of the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art “everything must change. Radical Intelligence. Saloniki 9,” curated by Nadja Argyropoulou.
The publication was made possible with the support of Kerenidis Pepe.
From Vardari to Omonoia, mythical places, condensed emotion, ephemeral monuments of innermost desires, first glances, first cruises, rakish strolls, grind houses, the kiosks swathed in all kinds of pornographic magazines, there, in the late ’80s, early ’90s, I would tremblingly ask the newsstand vendor for LOOK, the pocket-sized erotic magazine with glossy pages, naked men, erotic stories, ads for hookups, I was a senior in high school, one evening I was out wandering about the sidewalks of Omonoia, an older man approached me, he was handsome, offered me a cheese pie, then at his place, the feeling of freedom as I walked alone around Omonoia in the evening hours, lost among unknown faces of country cousins, outcasts, all sorts of bystanders, […]
[…] from Vardari to Omonoia, we erect the monuments to our love affairs with photographs, collages and poems, we pay tribute to our lineage, we claim the city’s public space as a living and embodied part of the history of the LGBTQ+ community, the history that runs parallel to, without ever intersecting with, the official national narrative, the history that is articulated through moments of pleasure, exchange, coded recognition, coming together, communal solidarity, confrontations and tensions, but also repression, violence, collective grief and struggles.
(from the editorial text)
VASKOS 