Robert Gabris – Asylum – A Poem of Unrest, 2024

Through drawing, installation, performance and video, Robert Gabris’s art explores multiple questions of diverse and convertible identity as well as hybridity, based on the representation and perception of the body. As an artist who is both Roma and queer, Robert Gabris examines the mechanisms of marginalisation and exclusion, and has developed a postcolonial critique of institutional structures. In opposition to the patriarchal, capitalist system, he seeks to invent inclusive, sensitive and supportive spaces that celebrate the diversity of life and the variety of emotions.

Asylum – A Poem of Unrest proposes the natural, animal world as a template for new models of community. Robert Gabris’s poem, performance, video animation and installation, taken together, explore the insect world; the artist sees them as “cosmic creatures, earthy monsters and underground beasts”. In its treatment of notions of vulnerability and resilience, his work triggers thoughts about metamorphosis and the dissolution of boundaries and binary norms. Poetic and immersive, Asylum – A Poem of Unrest is conceived as an inclusive, participatory space that encourages openness to difference and to others.