Francis Whorrall-Campbell (UK)
Residency period: September-November 2024
Based in Oxford, Francis Whorrall-Campbell (b.1995) is an artist, writer, and sometimes art critic from the UK. Working across text, sculpture, and the digital, their work undertakes a materialist investigation of sexual subjectivity. Guided by research into the pasts and presents of gender transition, a relationship between making an artwork and making a (gendered) self emerges as a method of thinking critically about how identities and desires are formed in interaction with the world and narratives around them.
His work will be shown in upcoming exhibitions at CCA Derry~Londonderry (2024); Xxijra Hii, London (2024); and Bologna.cc, Amsterdam (2025). They are the author of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED: [in progress] A non-fiction-novel about Kurt Cobain, Twink Death and the History of the Trans Internet, the first part published alongside an exhibition at Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
At La Becque, Whorrall-Campbell intends to begin research for a new critical writing project entitled Cow/boy Pony/Girl: The True Trans-Species T4T History of HRT. Developing a new writing methodology that blends fiction, cultural criticism, and historical analysis, they will investigate the origins of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Starting with the first experiments in testosterone synthesis and estrogen hormone isolation, which were conducted in the 1930s, Whorrall-Campbell’s work will attempt to demonstrate how HRT is intertwined with colonial and eugenic conceptions of human evolution, while offering an alternative future for these trans-specific initiatives that disrupt gender-focused normative medical production.
Francis Whorrall-Campbell, La Becque, 2024, photo Aurélien Haslebacher