zack mennell (UK) is an emerging (unemployed) artist using writing, photography and performance to explore queerness and neurodiversity in relation to presence and visibility.
Artistic expression is, for me, a way to make sense of the world and
an attempt to contextualise who I am within it. In stepping into difficulty
and pain through artmaking, I attempt to understand life through a different
register to that of daily survival. I want my work to have an uncanny
quality, that it might temporarily unsettle familiar places, making visible
some of the strange aspects and tensions embedded there.
I want to step outside, to be seen, to take up space, to make something private public.
I have been continuously othered - by the NHS, by University, by the DWP. My work is a way of doing something else - something creative, disruptive and affirming - with my status as ‘other’.
I want to step outside, to be seen, to take up space, to make something private public.
I have been continuously othered - by the NHS, by University, by the DWP. My work is a way of doing something else - something creative, disruptive and affirming - with my status as ‘other’.
I’m interested in intuitive knowledge, proprioception, and finding ways of extending the nonsense utterances that make up speech. I’m currently asking:
what does it mean to be seen?
where can the working class, queer, abject, porous, neurodivergent subject fit?
what does it mean to be seen?
on whose terms is visibility gained?
where can the working class, queer, abject, porous, neurodivergent subject fit?
can I find a way of being present but unseen?
contact: zackmennell@gmail.com
video by zack mennell, 2020