Confidante

Solo show, Neuer Kunstverein, Giessen, DE, 2025

Fourth chapter of The Court Jester, Confidante is a frozen banquet scene, seemingly abandoned by the characters who once inhabited it. Paintings of jesters and symbols sit alongside collected objects and furniture. A costumed figure moves through the space with strange gestures. Colour fills the room, as does a soundtrack of poetry and love songs. Yes, we are talking about love here—but against a backdrop of break-ups, patriarchal oppression, and systemic violence. We also sketch out, perhaps, ways of responding to this condition, through queer reflections that inevitably challenge established norms.

See you Sunday, handsome.

Sometimes, at night, I think of you.

You give me joy.

Sometimes, by day, maybe you think of me.

You once were joy.
When I think of you, I feel like crying.

Do you still think of me when you touch yourself?
When I think of me thinking of you, I feel like crying.

The damned prayer of OCD.
When I think of us before, I feel like crying.

You draw diagonals in your head.

Slaloming through life.
Music with love.

Why are you crying?

Music. Lonely. Sadness.
When I think of us now, only a pout remains.

Thank you for your honesty.

Have you ever gone two years without crying?
You can live side by side without ever being together.

Il faut te tenir à carreaux, ’cause I’m the ace of clubs that pierces your heart.
Every evening, I watch the sun blush pink-orange and I’m done lamenting.

I walk the shades of cobblestones.

Mixing deep black with sumptuous white to reach a pastel pink that has no adjectives left.
Roses rather than lilacs.

I’m done with you.

Forever, pretty one.

Incompatible opinions on common ground.
Crime of passion.
Manspreading.
The roar of your T-Max and your souped-up car is just the dying cry of your fading virility.
The male gaze.

G-8 — capitalism’s gang bang.

Bunga, Bunga!
A sixty-year-old man seeks a young, ambitious man or woman in their twenties.
Mansplaining.
A tough guy among tough guys in the gang rape, a nothingness in denial before the law.
Testosterror.
One last forced marriage between the Old Gentlemen and the criminal court.
“Ach, mein Süsser…”

The Gentlemen’s Club — now imprisoned.
Little-kids-ophilia.
I feel compassion for you at ten, stuck inside the body of a fourteen-year-old.
You know, when I was little, I cried a lot, I was sensitive.

An altar boy without a choir — or maybe the reverse.
Toreador!

“I’ll sit next to the prettiest one…”
Have you ever thought about the violence behind the term “missionary position”?
Patriarchal hysteria.

PTSD.

BPD.
So — happy now, bastard?
Serial offender, I watch you from the height of my drag queen-king heels.
You really ask yourself a lot of questions about masculinity.

“Excuse me, are you gay?”
I’m not afraid to cultivate my secret garden instead of public harassment.
“Come back here, you faggot!”

Not wanting any part of it.

“You suck?”

Homo-erection.

“Come back here, Radio Framboise!”
Finding yourself ass-deep between two crotches.

“How much for a blowjob?”
This is a man’s world.

“Is he the one who gives or the one who takes?”

Let’s burst those taboos open together.

“Maybe both?”
Let me escort you to your depression.

“Maybe he gives and takes.”
Easy money.

The world’s oldest profession, they said.

Nice asses for nice art pieces.

A bit of paid pleasure, for a bit of paid art.
The only bitch I see is life — and myself.

Confidante, 20′, performance, lacquer on resin and plaster masks, second-hand costume, Doppelkopf card game, recorded text, soundtrack

Hello, Darling!

I love Doc Martens and stiletto heels.

Coming out of the closet.

I love short skirts and stiff jeans.

Turning one’s coat inside out.

I love suits and ties, and corsets laced tight.

A.S.D.A.: Ambitious Sexual and Desire Addiction.

I love knots and sunglasses.
Oh dildo, my lovely dildo!

I really do love knots.
Hotness.

I love the knots in the hair, the knot over the eyes, the one at the small of the back, around the legs, around the waist.
Hornyness.

I love the knot in the throat.

Sometimes, when I look at you closely, I feel like crying.

I love the knot around my heart.

Sometimes, you please me so much, I feel like crying.

I love the knot to untie before I get to you.
1’600 species of the world’s flowers are edible.

I love the knot that wraps around you.
Asses are my Achilles’ heel.

I love the knot caught at the edge of the eyelids, right before the tear falls.

We should call it the Achilles’ ass.
Sometimes I want to lick the morning dew off a leaf.

Make me climb your rosebush.

Come into my ass and I’ll follow you anywhere.
Sexy boy.

Sensitive but serious.

Sexy girl.

Small but fierce.

Sexy you.

You’re my knight and my lady of the rose.

Sexy me.

Huge — but still magnificent.
You’re such a cutie.
Binary?

A parallel society, a perpendicular way of life, and you and me, lying in diagonal.
Biped.

To life, to the city.

Bisexual.

Friend or lover?

Biplane?

I could see you carrying the weirdos’ flag high.

Bipolar.

To life, to death.

Biathlete!

Lover or confidant?

Bi-amorous, never.

Friend — or more, if chemistry allows?
Bi, bi bi bi, bi bi, bi bi, bi bi bi bi, bi!
I long for much more than chemistry with you.
I respect where you come from.

A rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose, is a dark rose, is a white rose, is a pink rose, is a beautiful flourishing flower.
I love who you’ve become.

With all your particularities, you’re an extraordinary person — know that.
Two in one plus one makes you and me.
Partenaire particulière, cherche partenaire particulier.

I just can’t get enough of you.
I love you so much, Babe.

Confidante, exhibition views

You have the choice.

I throw flowers on the one before, as if I were burying him alive.
Society today is stuck in overtime.

I slam my fist on the table, a rose in the other hand.
Don’t be afraid of the abolition of your privileges.
Eve’s apple or Adam’s apple?

I’ll always prefer my roses to your narcissuses.
Stick to your lipstick.
So rather than Eve biting into a hypothetical forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, I, good Adam, bite into the rose that pricks my tongue and makes me smile blood from the corner of my lips.
I’m up for make-up.
Let’s tear down architectural phalluses the way we topple colonial and dictatorial statues.
You lean toward feminism rather than masculinism.

I loathe aristocracy and bourgeoisie, but I’ll make an exception for the Duchess.
You lean toward joy rather than bitterness.

I demand a redefinition of the G-spot!
You lean left rather than right.

Non-binarity, not as a theory, but as a solution.
You lean toward pink and the rainbow, rather than black shirts.
A march for all, not Manif pour tous.
You lean toward abortion rather than the death of the mother.
The end of Man, the future of the Human.
If neoconservatives exist, then you and I will be neo-non-binaries.
Ciao, bello!
The only place for conservatism belongs in a footnote of a history book about the fall of neoliberalism.
Ciao, Silvio!
I lay down flowers and a few spits on your coffin, patriarchy.
Grab ’em by the dicky!
When is it, the green wave, the human tide, the pink wave, damn it?!
Queeeeeeeeeeeeer!
La Nonna rather than Il Padre at the head of the table.

Viva la Vulva!
Hijack Harry Potter’s merchandising profits to fund transition support groups.
A small orgy for the powerful — that’ll calm everyone down.
The future’s bright, the future’s pan.
By the sacred bonds of marriage for all, I now pronounce you consenting partners.
A monthly Pride instead of a yearly fair.
LG, already. BT, in progress. QQQ, for sure. QI, clearly. And A+.
The march of pride — with pride in the march.
I absorb the violence of your millennial masculine archetype, turn it into a little soap bubble, and blow it through a neon-pink hula hoop.
Our Father, who art in heaven — may your name be forgotten.
The only alternative truth I allow myself to create is the one where non-binarity finally has its place.
Conversion therapy to open-mindedness.
They lived queerly ever after — and had no children.
The future belongs to those who rise higher.
As long as the ties that bind us remain pink.
Homage to La Mer: After laughter comes queers.

Please receive my most sarcastic regards.

Yours, deeply,

Your Confidante.

Voice: Yasmine Dankwah
Sound: Henry Sims
Photography: Rolf K. Wegst
Video: Renen
Sponsored by the Cultural Office of the University City of Giessen.
The exhibition is made possible with the support of the Republic
and Canton of Geneva and the City of Geneva.

Soundtrack playlist:
Mon amie la rose, Françoise Hardy, 1965
Fever, Peggy Lee, 1958
Put your hands on my shoulders, Paul Anka, 1959
Beating, Tirzah, 2021