Decolonial Encounters: Celebrating Queer Joy in Germany

The dominant understanding in Europe about diversity, inclusion and intersectionality is trying to include the excluded into a society that didn’t want them in the first place. As a red thread for our project, we want to centre Queer Joy of BIPoC. This sounds simple for a white heteronormative audience. But it’s not for a queer BIPoC. Usually white artists portray the struggle and pain of queer BIPoC. This means the victimisation and fetishisation of queer BIPoC’s sexuality is the dominant narrative in Europe. We want to disrupt this narrative by portraing queer BIPoC in their daily lives. That is why, in Berlin & Colgine, we photographed eleven portraits for postcares to demonstrate what joy can look like.

© 2022 EuropeLab funded by the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum with 5.000,00€
Realised by Farah Abdi & Miriam Mona Mukalazi
Photo Credits: Mathilda Noelia (Cologne) + Samet Durgun (Berlin)
Styling: Tomisin Etti (Cologne)

HomeTelling: Testimonials from Europe

HomeTelling aims to explore questions of belonging and identity amidst rising nationalist and far-right sentiments in many European countries. We believe that one’s identity and sense of belonging are closely related to the concept of home. We decided to interview people of different ages, genders, religions, nationalities and backgrounds across Europe about where and what home is for them. By bringing together different perspectives of home we hope to not only illustrate the diversity of Europe and expand the definition of European identity but also understand if and how people feel at home in Europe.

Lena – Austria: “If I want to feel at home, the people I hang out with are really important for me, as well as their political opinions.”
Lankika – Sweden: “I think home is the place that goes deepest inside of you. Home for me can be a state of mind, the place I can let my emotions be free.”
Josef – Germany: “I feel home in my room where I keep my collection of old stamps.”
Sapoor – Italy: “A home is the most important thing in life. We have an expression that says: You can visit other people to eat, but don’t ever leave your home.”
Hafsa – Italy: “The first thing that comes to my mind when I say home is Somalia. Because Home is my house, where I was born and raised, where I saw things happen, often ugly, but also beautiful.”
Marija – Crotia/Italy: “Home is a collage; it’s made of memories of places and spaces, of people and special moments.”
Anis – Switzerland: “I feel home when I look out of my home’s window and can see the surrounding which is so familiar to me.”
Iro – Greece: “Home is connected to life and moments. What makes home unique is the story behind it.”
Savitri – Italy: “Home is where I am, where I live until some passage happens and it ends.”
Shila – Turkey: “In Turkey, people think I’m Turkish – in Germany, people want to know what’s my so called migration background which is kind of a thing in German society – in some Iranian communities, people call me the European girl.”
Vjacelsavs – Latvia: “We lived a good and comfortable there [in the USA]. But my whife says it is easier for her to breathe when she js in Latvia.”
Yulia – Russia: “This picture was taken in a place that comes to my mind when I think of home…Ironically, the Latvian embassy is only few blocks away, so a particle of my homeland is here too.”

© 2018 FutureLab Europe funded by the European Policy Centre with 5.000,00€
Authors: Marija Biljan, Yulia Gershinkova, Iro Kaoukaki and Miriam Mona Mukalazi