ASCHENBACH

These works are companion pieces to the artist’s installation Death in Venice. By placing himself in Aschenbach’s iconic death pose, the artist positions himself between Thomas Mann, filmmaker Luchino Visconti, and librettist Benjamin Britten. Interrogating queer temporality, desire, and subjectivity, he engages with the novella’s inherent queerness, where desire resists fixed identities. Drawing from queer theory, he critiques the heteronormative gaze imposed on Aschenbach and Tadzio. His body becomes both an embodiment of queer yearning and an act of resistance, situating desire within a historical continuum while challenging dominant narratives in the work’s adaptations and reception.

Aschenbach I-III

Pigment ink on transparency
11 x 14in | Edition of 3
2024