Nando Messias, Post-Sissy – Study Room Gathering

Following Nando’s trilogy of Sissy performances (2008-2017), this gathering will consider the ways in which queer artists have attempted to make sense of their identities, their bodies, their visibility, their social erasure and their political struggles through their practice.

Nando performed Death and the Sissy, the final instalment in the Sissy series, in November 2017, and wants to explore what the future of his own practice might be post-Sissy, and discuss how male effeminacy (or queer femininity) has – or has not –  been discussed, passed on, historicised and archived.

Nando Messias’ work straddles performance art, dance and theatre. His performances combine beautiful images with a fierce critique of gender, visibility and violence. He has performed at Hayward Gallery, V&A, Tate Tanks, Roundhouse, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, Tate Britain, Toynbee Studios and ICA, among other spaces across the UK and internationally.

Nando’s published writings include Sissy that Walk: The Sissy’s Progress in Queer Dramaturgies—International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer (Palgave Macmillan, 2016) –Visibility: Performance & Activism in Performing Interdisciplinarity—Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries Through an Active Aesthetic (Routledge, 2017).

Nando has collaborated with LADA on our programme Just Like a Woman, in Ljubljana (2013), New York and London (2015), and on our LADA Screens series in 2016.