For those in or visiting London, we recommend you go to see artist Harold Offeh’s new pop-up exhibition Trustful Strangers Induces Fearless Aliens, showing at The Showroom until 15 August (free entry).
Offeh’s latest show includes work developed out of our Let’s Talk About Chemsex project, commissioned for Recoverist Month 2024.
The exhibition, Trustful Strangers Induces Fearless Aliens, runs at The Showroom from 1 July to 15 August 202, with free entry.
It is a welcome moment to see work first developed with Portraits of Recovery continuing to meet new audiences in another public setting.
Offeh’s practice spans performance, video and installation, often exploring identity, popular culture and the relationship between audience and artist. The exhibition draws om a decade of collaborative practice and public facing work, including, Let’s Talk About Chemsex, which brought together artists, Recoverists and communities to explore experiences of chemsex through sound.
Trustful Strangers Induce Fearless Aliens offers a space that invites encounter and trust, positioning audience members as active participants in the artist’s ongoing critique of social systems and stereotypes.
The exhibition stands in dialogue with Offeh’s upcoming Paddington Square x The Showroom billboard commission, which will be unveiled on 23 July during the exhibition’s run. Working with a group of young people from The Showroom’s Imagining Futures programme, the billboard, titled TRUSTFUL STRANGERS INDUCE FEARLESS WALKS, explores young people’s hopeful desire to increase empathy and mutual trust between anonymous passers-by as they encounter each other in London’s public spaces.
Together the two presentations look back and look forward, positioning imagination as a powerful tool for creating more hopeful futures.
In the exhibition, audiences can listen to two Let’s Talk About Chemsex soundtracks, Anticipation <—> Anxiety and A Warm Hug. For those unable to see the show in person, the works can also be accessed online through Portraits of Recoverty’s listening party page.
Inclusion of work from Let’s Talk About Chemsex, extends reach beyond its original Recoverist Month context. Moving between gallery and public space, the work continues opening-up conversations on the intersections of sex, intimacy, and consent within queer communities.
Offeh’s practice spans performance, video and installation, often exploring identity, popular culture and the relationship between audience and artist.