Unit 4 Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, Birmingham
Fri 2 Oct · 19:00
Centrala excitedly presents the launch of 'Queer Futures' for October Digbeth First Friday on Friday 2nd October 2026 from 6pm - 9pm. Queer Futures is a group exhibition of film, photography, sculpture, and print by eight LGBTQI+ artists from Central and Eastern Europe now living in the United Kingdom curated by the Polish artist Zula Rabikowska. The exhibition presents works by Arti Siudem, Janina Sabaliauskaites, duo Siarhei Yazlavetski & Aleh Razhkou, Byuka Makodru, Yuri Dvizhon and Sebi Bruckner. This group exhibition brings together artworks that span six countries, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Romania, Ukraine, and Hungary, and include documentary and staged photography, moving image and film, sculpture and installation, and self-published print. Each artist has built a life in the UK after leaving a place where being openly LGBTQI+ might have carried real risk. Stories of migration,crossing borders and escape are interwoven with experiences of love, celebration and fear. The works are drawn from long-term personal archives and collaborative projects, including analogue and pinhole photography processes, an installation informed by Romanian and Moldovan folklore, self-portraiture, and documentary film addressing forced migration and LGBTQI+ life on the margins of Central Asia. An experimental film exploring the bordering of queerness, grief and transgender identity in contemporary Poland; a gay couple’s escape from Belarus and their rebuilding of a life together in London; queer and lesbian life across Lithuania and the UK, built through decades of close, collaborative relationships; a Ukrainian artist’s work challenging flattened representations of refugees, alongside a documentary account of an older LGBTQI+ couple surviving on the margins of Kazakhstan, a Hungarian artist’s departure from Budapest after a religious upbringing left little room for who they were. The exhibition also celebrates what has been built since: chosen family and sisterhood; portraits