I WAS WITH A HORSE WITH A LIP SO FAT
SPOILER, Berlin, 2025

Fireflies suffer a tiny, continuous burn directly on their bodies. In the darkness, they ignite their flesh to send brief signals into the void, hoping to find connection. Appearing, disappearing, reappearing, vanishing. In their lingering, luminescent, but only pale and dim, often greenish shimmering matter, they resemble ghosts. Faint lights or wandering souls.

The dance of the fireflies, that moment of grace and dignity that resists the world of darkness, echoes another kind of nocturnal choreography: mxn moving through parks at night, cruising in silence, exchanging glances and gestures—brief flashes of desire. Like fireflies, they navigate the shadows, seeking intimacy without identity. Both the firefly and the cruising body become luminous beings in nocturnal landscapes—revealing themselves only for a moment, then vanishing again.

However, these moments are becoming rarer. Light pollution disrupts the fireflies’ ability to communicate, while smartphones and dating apps turn anonymous encounters into curated profiles and filtered desire. Scientists warn that we may be among the last generations to witness fireflies illuminating the night. My oversized ceramic fireflies emerge from this tension between loss and persistence. Rooted in teenage memories of warm summer nights, they reflect on ecological loss and queer histories, but also on the resilience of insects, which have survived planetary catastrophes and periods of mass extinction.

Pier Paolo Pasolini described the disappearance of fireflies as the fading of marginal voices under the glare of dominant culture. In that sense, these works carry that thought forward: they mourn what is being lost—ecologies, intimacies, ways of being—but they also resist. In their fragile glow is a form of insistence. A signal still sent. A quiet refusal to vanish.