Oliver Doe, b.1994, is an Irish-British artist currently based in Rotterdam, NL.
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My work explores queer communication through varying levels of coding and abstraction. Research into use of colour, gesture, and other non-verbal lexicons as coded languages for cruising or signalling identity is central to this, as well as the queer possibilities of abstraction within verbal language.
With these works I am investigating Queer Linguistics and its (de)construction; queer uses of existing language; and abstracted and queered modes of interpersonal (and societal) communication. Considering repetition, indexing, code-switching and citation as the building blocks of (queer) language, their works modulate and bend these foundations to highlight the mobility and malleability of language in queer use.
The recent work and research stems from an interest in the asterisk within queer language use. This typographical symbol often appears as a marker of ‘something more’ or ‘something else’ beyond the language that we can see. This can be used as a mode of queering, particularly within gendered expressions (eg. Queer*, Man*, Woman*), but appears most notably with the use of “Trans*”, implying a set of meanings beyond the simplicity of this foundational word.
As we expand the categories, these layers begin to overlap and their meanings expand into something new, something queer, something that defies concrete, universal meaning. By treating the asterisk as an abstracted figure, the intertwining and overlaps generate encounters, which in themselves form new, and often unexpected, layers of meaning and possibility as the asterisks dance between each other.
Formative research has been focused on linguistic abstraction as a performative mode that can both construct and deconstruct the possibilities of queer identity categories, communicating desire or identity beyond language as we expect it. This work focuses particularly on paralanguages used in the realms of cruising and drag – on ways in which they are abstracted through time and situation, but also have significant overlaps and divergences that defy being understood from the outside.
This practice is critically engaged with colour as lexicon within different queer cultures, including the ‘hanky code’, signalling sexual desire with coloured handkerchiefs; the colour coding of pride flags; and more historical nuances of parsing queerness, translating these into works that twist these cyphers into new languages.
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Oliver has exhibited widely throughout the UK, as well as in the USA and EU, and has published several poetry and performance publications since 2014. Their work is held in private collections across the UK, Ireland, USA, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Croatia, Switzerland, Greece, Austria, Sweden, Iceland, and Australia. They studied at Newcastle University from 2012-2016, and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Piet Zwart Institute MFA Programme in 2022. They are currently working as a coordinator and educator at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), since 2023.