I want you to know my story

I want you to know my story is the first solo exhibition in Italy by U.S. artist Jess T. Dugan, resulting from the publication of her latest project Look at me like you love me (Mack books, 2022) and curated by Laura De Marco with an original and unpublished production by Spazio Labo’.

In Look at me like you love me Jess T. Dugan reflects on desire, intimacy, friendship and the ways in which our identities are shaped by these experiences. Starting from her own experience, the artist weaves together self-portraits, portraits of people alone and in couples, still lifes, and a series of diaristic writings to reflect on the transformations that define our existences. The result is a poetic and delicate investigation of the transformations that define an entire life, through a varied imagery that interweaves traditional roles and identities with queer patterns and issues of our present. The contemporary individuals that are depicted reshape the conventional dynamics of the historical artistic portrait and give us one of the most powerful and complex forms of intimacy, that of seeing and being seen. 

The exhibition opens on Thursday, October 26, 2023 as part of the Gender Bender Festival and is part of Look at us – Rassegna di narrazioni non conform (Review of nonconforming stories): a program of exhibitions and meetings that from April to December 2023 Spazio Labo’ dedicates to the visibility and deconstruction of traditional family, identity and gender roles through the hybridization of visual languages.

As part of the exhibition you will find videos and photographs previously unseen in Italy, and Spazio Labo’ and Leporello’s bookshop will host a special selection for queer-themed photography books and more, that you can check out and purchase for the entire duration of the exhibition