London- and Los Angeles-based artist P. Staff will discuss recent exhibitions, influences and working methodologies, as well as read from their recent collection of poetry. Recent exhibitions include In Ekstase, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Impact Play, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona; and On Venus, most recently presented at the the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled The Milk of Dreams. Staff’s work spans installation, poetry and video, and is concerned with affect, biopolitics, queer and trans theory and disability and debility.

Born in the UK in 1987, P. Staff lives and works in Los Angeles and London. As a filmmaker, installation artist and poet, they draw from a wide-ranging assortment of inspirations, materials and settings, of which recent examples include Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, affect theory and the transpoetics of writers such as Che Gossett and Eva Hayward, as well as their own studies in modern dance, astrology and end-of-life care. In Staff’s interdisciplinary practice, these varying threads serve to emphasize the processes by which bodies—especially those of people who are queer, trans or disabled—are interpreted, regulated and disciplined in a rigorously controlled society. Staff has exhibited extensively, gaining significant recognition and awards for their work, which is held in private and public collections internationally. Staff received their BA in Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Studies from Goldsmiths University of London in 2009. They completed the LUX Associate Artists Programme and studied Contemporary Dance at The Place in London in 2011.

Banner image: In Ekstase, 2023 Kunsthalle Basel. Photo by Philipp Hanger