Hedda Bauers Story
Hedda Bauer
Ostra Goinge, Sweden
Born 1990
Occupation: Artist
”As an artist, I live my life in a big queer bubble. When me and my friends go out, we have a queer take over. There are many private queer places, but you need to know a friend to get in. I have gladly invited people I met on the streets:”Hey do you want to join?” However, I have learnt the hard way that I need to be careful with that. Being in a queer community, you have to know the codes and protect the space. If a new person who doesn't understand the codes joins and starts to question what takes place, that energy easily destroys the mood. It can even be dangerous. I experienced that a while ago when a friend of mine had invited someone thinking it would work well, but it turned out very violent and got bad for everybody.
I move around a lot and, in every new place, I try to find a queer context. Historically, this is what queer people have done. Living in the queer artistic bubble is one thing. Going out for an evening at a club called Lesbisk Fredag in Copenhagen and just enjoying the organized queer space is another. I've forgotten that I need this so much. I need to feel we're all okay with being queer, we all fight for similar stories. There, I feel welcome, safe, and I can talk about different things. You have to dare to be a little separatist. Right. Dare to say: ”I can't take in everyone now”, because that's what I've been doing for many years. I have been inviting people and offering a shoulder to lean on.
But the bubble... It's hard to look away from it. I notice it when I meet people who are like... fangirling over me: ”Oh, you're so cool!” I'm like, what? I'm just me. Sometimes I get irritated because I'm just like them. But maybe I'm the only non-binary person they know. Then I become a symbol for that. And they're like: ”Wow, you live this way. You dare to say what you mean.” This year I've expressed myself in a completely new way in my art, which is very queer and I dares to say things that may not follow the traditional artistic language. I am using a more everyday, intimate and personal language because I think that's exciting. It has taken a while for me to reach this point. I have been very afraid of the artistic world, because it's incredibly white, conservative and full of men.
I've grown up with Facebook and Instagram. That's how I find lesbian rooms in public. That's also how I date. But I think each individual creates the lesbian rooms by putting something of themselves in the spaces. For example, when I was living in Gothenburg, there was a photographer who took a lot of pictures of everyone in the community. It became her language, she made a book out of it. Her project helped me to become comfortable with my body. I played a lot with my body language at that time. I got tattoos. I was naked in front of the lens. I made my body visible. I've worked a lot with how I express myself. I've had a lot of different styles. The thing with expressions is really exciting, because you're creating your own little queer home with your clothes, hair and make up. I've always felt safe in that. For example, this fur coat is like an armor. It's a big pink fake bear fur that looks like a teddy but it's definitely an armor against the rest of the world. I feel lost if I look mainstream.
I grew up in the countryside. There was one lesbian in my school and she was very bullied. Our environment was so violent. The Swedish right wing party, Sverigedemokraterna, was growing in the south part of Sweden and that made constant conflict at my school. There was a warlike environment between people from the countryside and the city. It was a homophobic environment. If I compare my environment to my friends who grew up in the big cities, I see how open their upbringing was. They lived in Stockholm, where youth houses and a completely other knowledge about same sex relationships was present. There should be a law that every summer a queer teenager from a city goes out to the country and vice versa. I'm happy about the new generation. Today there are so many lesbians who just don't give a damn. They just do their thing.”
