Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art
 

Rabindranth X Bhose

A photo of a sunny bogland landscape, golden brown in late afternoon sunlight. At the top text reads ‘Corpores Infames’ in a font made from drawings of nude people shaping their bodies into the letters. Shadows of 3 people creep across the grass on the left foreground. In the centre foreground two pools of water sit in the bogland. On the right foreground a photoshopped black ink drawing of a bog butter container on its side appears like it has spilled its contents out into the pool.
Belladonna Paloma, Oren Shoesmith and Rabindranath X Bhose, Corpores Infames, 2024
Courtesy of the artists
A photograph showing a sun-bleached greyish lambs skull against a white wall. On the top of the forehead of the skull, in bright fluorescent pink paint, an egg with its shadow behind it has been painted.
Belladonna Paloma, Egg Anointed Skull, 2023
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Peter Otto
a close up of a person performing in front of a green hill with an old stone building on top. He is covered with a muddy mixture, wearing a pink neckerchief with a bare chest. His head is tilted, his eyes are closed and he looks blissful. There are two people watching him in the background.
Rabindranath X Bhose, Body of the Bog, 2023
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Sean Patrick Campbell
An oval ceramic plate on a white wall. The ceramic is a tan brown colour with an inky black drawing of a monk bending over a stone dolman in prayer. In front there are two crutches in the grass, crossed over each other. Above, some clouds and a round moon are visible.
Oren Shoesmith, 2023
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Rabindranath X Bhose

Rabindranath X Bhose,  Belladonna Paloma and Oren Shoesmith are three friends and co-conspirators who form a boggy trans crip collective. They collaborate on bog-related projects, in devotion to the ecological potency of wetlands.

The images shown above represent the Glasgow International 2024 project that Rabindranth X Bhose is participating in, as well as the artist’s individual practice.

Rabindranath X Bhose is an artist rooted in Glasgow, hailing from London, Scotland, France, India and Brussels. He has a practice rooted in movement, bringing together text, drawing, and sculpture. His research circles around queer masculinity, sacred transness and crip magic, focusing on a sense of ‘crossing over’. In 2023, he was commissioned for his first solo show, DANCE IN THE SACRED DOMAIN, at Collective, Edinburgh, including a performance entitled Body of the Bog, a writhing dance of a mummified bog body come to life. He undertook residencies in 2024 at the Workroom, Glasgow and in 2023 at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop and Tramway, Glasgow, researching the idea of the ‘gender fugitive’: a figure who evades restrictive categories through movement to reveal a body still and always transforming. He presented commissioned performances in 2022 for Beyond the Archive, Dundee University with GENERATOR Projects and Bbeyond, Dundee and At Practise #4, David Dale, Glasgow; and contributed to In Dedication, We Exist w/Koppel Project, London (2022); In Touch, Embassy, Edinburgh (2021); and Platform, Edinburgh Art Festival (2020). From 2018-2020, he was a member of School of the Damned, a nomadic, peer-organised art school.

Projects