New book: A Spell Bundle – Manifesting Queer Futurity

A Spell Bundle – Manifesting Queer Futurity is an experimental publication in its nature, combining poetry and visual research materials as well as some selected works by artists participating in the exhibition: Donja Nasseri, Ebun Sodipo, Julius Thissen, Nayara Leite, and S*an D. Henry-Smith.

Throughout their practices, the artists construct forms of shelter against erasure and violence, developing strategies for surviving hostile worlds while preserving tenderness, intimacy, and queer possibility. In the face of collapsing realities, their works form a bundle of hope: a tender manifesto of defiance, resilience, and shared humanity.

A queer approach to the publication on all levels: through design and pages orientation, printing approach, and editorial approach-combining images, visual research of artists, with poems.

A Spell Bundle – Manifesting Queer Futurity is a follow up to the exhibition of the same name, which is produced by FOTODOK at Clublokaal as part of the 12th edition of BredaPhoto Festival (11 September – 25 October 2026).

Julius Thissen (b. 1993, the Netherlands) lives and works in Arnhem. His work explores themes of community, representation, and gender in relation to dominant power structures. With a background as a performance artist, Thissen’s photographic practice focuses on narratives that explore the thin line between success and failure. These themes are closely connected to today’s performance-driven culture and the influence of societal expectations on human behaviour. Rooted in his own personal experiences as a transmasculine person, Thissen’s work challenges the restrictive and often binary narratives imposed on transgender and queer individuals. 

Ebun Sodipo (b. 1993, UK) works across sculpture, installation, writing, performance, and collage. Using research and storytelling as critical tools, Sodipo seeks to subvert notions of race, gender, sexuality, and power as shaped by history and its visual cultures. Guided by Black feminist thought, her practice employs collage and fabulation to create real and imagined narratives of Black trans women’s presence, embodiment, and interiority across past, present, and future. Drawing from archives of found digital imagery, she reconstructs and reinterprets social and art histories through assemblage, exploring themes of aspiration, intimacy, gender euphoria, desire, fantasy, and adornment. 

Nayara Leite (b. 1989, Brazil / Norway) is an artist and writer based in Bergen, Norway. Her multidisciplinary practice spans research, archives, and storytelling, focusing on LGBTQ+ experiences in Brazil, Norway, and beyond. Working with text, film, photography, performance, and installation, Leite combines personal narratives, political discourse, and archival materials to explore migration, identity, resistance, and belonging. Inspired by contemporary liberation movements and activist practices, her work has increasingly incorporated intersectional perspectives. For Leite, collaboration is a foundational part of her practice; alongside her autonomous work, she forms one half of the artist duo Nayara Leite & Kaeto Sweeney.