Publication date: 15.03.2024

X-Philes is a queer art collective consisting of Rafał Domagała, Maja Gomulska, Bartosz Jakubowski and Gabriela Sułkowska. It works at the intersection of poetry, performance, visual arts and choreography. The collective's name evokes associations with a secret archive, especially since the basis of their activities are contemporary and historical texts. It also includes the word "philos," which in Greek means a loved one, since an important aspect of the group's work is collectivity and community building. X-Philes organize workshops, meetings and performance events. In 2022, they published the first anthology of queer poetry in Poland through the Old Town Cultural Center in Warsaw, and put together an exhibition, Tales from Blood and Bone, at the Foksal Gallery Foundation.

The X-Philes campaign draws on Ann Brashares' iconic teen book The Wandering Denim Society, in which four friends take turns wearing the same pair of jeans and experiencing the vacation of their lives. The X-Philes performance, which lasts for two months, involves sending the same pair of jeans to seven queer poets living in different cities in Poland. Each of them will wear them for a week and write their poetry, draw and document their daily lives on them. The clothing, the closest thing to the body, a personal object, will become a living archive connecting the poets, their work and their daily life experiences.

The action refers to mail art (mail art), which developed in the 1960s and 1970s in an international community of conceptual artists, including those from countries behind the Iron Curtain under censorship. X-Philes similarly creates an alternative, independent art circuit and a "queer" collective archive.

Documentation of the action in the form of poems, videos and photos will be presented on an ongoing basis on Zachęta's website, as well as on the social media of the gallery and the X-Philes collective. The summation of the whole will become a public presentation of a pair of jeans and a performance, which will take place in mid-May 2024.

Participating in the action are: angel (Ania Ziębińska and Olka Dąbrowska), Mikołaj Borys Brzozowski, Mac Lewandowski, Joanna Łępicka, Danielka Weiss

Joanna Lepicka (she/he) - poet. In 2023 she published Exercise Notebook. She edits the Polish Stoner. She lives in Nowa Huta.

Danielka Weiss (she/he) - queer trans girl, adhd, shitposter, post photographer. Creates patchwork works based on chaotic research, text and digital collecting. She screened her film when the light goes on in the darkroom at the 2023 post-porn festivals, participated in Kem School Warsaw, ING Summer School in Sokolowsk, and attended the Deep Sea Babies hydro-feminist science conference in Krakow. She studies experimental film at the Academy of Art in Szczecin, and is working on her graduation project Polyamory Allotment Gardens in Barcelona. She spent August 2022 on a residency at the allotments Creating Space: accessibility, art and allotment in cooperation with Stroboscope Gallery, during which she processed her experiences and psychodiscourse as part of the Survival Art project. Finalist of the Young Wolves festival. She has published in zines published by Bomba, "x.philes", "Girls* to the front", among others. In 2019 she co-curated the zine "Queer After Gay"

Mac Lewandowski (they/them he/she/it) - combines theater, words, second-circuit materials, borrowings from mass culture, his own experiences and DJ-ing as a creation of a space of collective, liberating performance. He works on collective actions treating the artistic persona and the audience on equal terms. He wants to create a space that is both diverse and inclusive, to deconstruct the stagnant, to confront prejudice. As a DJ persona (DiV4), he oscillates between chaos and sensuality, drawing inspiration from the ephemeral nature of performance art and queer identity - combining fast, sharp beats, dynamic elements and a dreamy landscape with a lively mix of latinx influences, emphasizing the rhythmic depth of drums. The energetic and exhilarating mix evokes a sense of escape, reflecting the artistx definition of gender fluidity. Author person of the DEKONSTRUKT event series. She is a member of the DEKONSTRUKT and POISE collectives.

Mikolaj Borys Brzozowski (he/him) - student and cultural worker. Together with Ola Wewior, he forms the osesi collective. He is interested in demolishing the elitist image of art and working for accessibility. He lives in Poznań and hails from Bydgoszcz.

angelka (Ania Ziębińska and Olka Dąbrowska) - a love-creative duo, whose participants sometimes transform themselves into two little field mice, together and separately carrying out poetic, artistic and sound activities. Together they write, play dj-sets, create stage sets and video works, and organize meetings and events in the angelkatopia and blanket corner series.