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Luca Bosani

Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body

Queering the Mind,

Releasing the Body

Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body 02

‘Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body’ is an ongoing collaborative project initiated by Bosani in 2023 that explores the intersections between queerness, mental health and collective care. Developed through dialogue with queer and neurodivergent artists and creatives across disciplines (including visual art, sound, choreography, and fashion), the project creates immersive performative environments where personal experiences, emotions, and memories are transformed into shared rituals.

Each iteration is collectively developed as a multi-sensory journey, combining sonic compositions, movement, costume and wearable artworks to foster reflection, vulnerability, and connection. The performances invite active participation, exploring tenderness, trauma, healing, and transformation. Through queer world-building and collaborative practice, the project challenges dominant narratives surrounding mental health and identity, creating spaces where diversity and non-conformity are encouraged and celebrated. The project explores how collective imagination and care are tools for liberation, allowing participants to reconnect with their bodies and each other.

2024, Performance (30 minutes), repeated twice, Victoria & Albert Museum, The Globe, London, UK

Funded by V&A Museum x Adobe Foundation, Adobe Creative Residency 2024.

Photography: Hydar Dewachi, Rose Leahy. Videography: Marco Carini.

Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body 01

‘Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body 01’ was presented at Hypha Studios, London, in February 2024 as a 30-minute performance followed by an open Q&A. ‘Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body 02’ was presented at the V&A Museum, London, in April 2024 through two 30-minute live performances. Collaborating artists and creatives to date: FLORA L. (they/them), Lulu Manning (she/her), Conn Williams (he/they), Sakeema Peng Crook (she/her), Michael Kesting (he/him), Luca Bosani (they/he). Fashion contributors for each iteration are listed in the video credits.

2024, Performance (45 minutes), Hypha Studios, London, UK

Funded by Wandsworth Council London as part of Grow and Flourish. Supported by the Hypha Studios Award. Photography & Videography: Inês Brochado

Live Performance

Video Documentation (3:35 min)

Q&A: Queerness and Mental Health

left to right:

Luca Bosani is a multimedia artist working with sculpture, painting and performance. In 2017 – during their Performance MA at the Royal College of Art – disappointed and constrained by existing gender and artistic categorisation Luca created the concept of UPOs (Unidentified Performing Objects), artworks that reject categorisation and sit in between definitions; ever-changing, fluid and queer they aim to transform both the wearer and the viewer. In this non-coded, non-binary and non-prescriptive space, their creativity grows and flourishes. Collaboration and coral group performances are at the core of Luca’s practice, and their UPOs are practical and conceptual tools for gender non-conforming individuals, neurodivergent communities and young people to feel seen, heard, included and supported.

FLORA L. is a stylist working across costume-based as well as editorial projects. Exploring styling beyond the gender binary, they touch on self-expression’s essential role in queer coding and identity. Flo carries this fluid discipline into fashion imagery collaborating with dancers and choreographers to develop narratives within the world of post-gender fashion. Formerly working within costume for Netflix’s latest season of Top Boy, they draw on the character-building and sociological practices of costume to create stories. Recent collaborations include Jamie Cousins, Camilla Greenwell and Raluca Margescua with publications for SICKY and Vanity. Flora currently assists Tom O’Dell prioritising Vintage and second-hand pieces to style Ray Winstone, Martin Freeman, and Sam Claflin. Within this world, Flora takes on the traditions of menswear and distributes them to all genders in their practice.

Conn Williams is a movement specialist, choreographer and teacher. He has appeared in West End, opera, music videos, site-specific works, dance for film and art installations. In the past, they have collaborated with TRAH & CHIPS Theatre Ensemble and BYMT as a choreographer and movement director. In Conn’s teaching practice, there is a focus on giving others the knowledge and space to gain greater awareness of their physicality and how to express themselves through the body and movement. Conn is interested in creating multidisciplinary work that immerses audiences in the experience so that they become somewhat collaborators.

Lulu Manning is a contemporary music artist and sound design/composer embracing the unknown. They use sound, performance, experimentation and improvisation as a means of discovery, connection, provocation and self-creation. Luca has performed in a diverse range of settings from London’s iconic Roundhouse, where she was a resident artist throughout 2022/23, to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Brighton’s Great Escape Festival, Islay Jazz Festival, Fierce Festival, Southbank Centre and Wilderness Fest, to opening for artists such as Jools Holland, Holysseus Fly and Tom Rasmussen. Born and raised in Glasgow, Luca moved to London in 2018 to study Jazz at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Luca has recently worked on the AudioVisual adventure ‘Welcome To Asteria’ which featured collaborations with filmmaker Marco Alessi and Fashion Artifact and Millinery Designer Leo Carlton. As an independent artist, Luca’s releases have been featured on BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 2, and BBC Radio Scotland. Luca is a shortlisted artist for The Arts Foundation Futures Award 2024 and was a participant in the Serious Take 5 programme 2023.

Luca’s work currently explores the merging of human and more than human sound; using their voice alongside a range of experimental electronic software and compositional techniques such as granular synthesis and field recording. They focus on improvisation as a root process; intuitive; searching; their sonic fingerprint laced in murmurations of chaos and gentleness and everything in between. Luca is an artist who is continually asking more questions than providing answers – how do we stay with the trouble?

2024, Q&A: Queerness and Mental Health (45 minutes), Hypha Studios, London, UK

Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body 02

Funded by V&A Museum x Adobe Foundation as part of the Adobe Creative Residency 2024.

by: Conn Williams, FLORA L., Luca Bosani, Lulu Manning, Sakeema Peng Crook.

with fashion pieces by: Inok Chung, Seli Korsi, Gil Hursthausen, Mathilde Dumait, Solitude Studios, Warm Metal, Omina.

Photography: Hydar Dewachi, Rose Leahy.

Videography: Marco Carini.

Queering the Mind, Releasing the Body 01

Funded by Wandsworth Council London. Supported by the Hypha Studios Award.

by: Conn Williams, FLORA L., Luca Bosani, Lulu Manning.

with fashion pieces by: Jack Janvrin, OFFSHOOT, Drew Kent, Beïna Bennacer, Alec Rhys Bizby, Dan Reyes, The House of Syth.

Photography & Videography: Inês Brochado.