Sour-Puss: The Opera Pre-Launch Party

About

Sour-Puss: The Opera is a collaborative project by artist duo Diogo Duarte and Jessica Mitchell. Born out of the unlikely friendship between a psychotherapist and a mental health worker who are also artists, Sour-Puss is a composite character bearing both biographical and fictional traits, created to expose the hypocrisies and inconsistencies within seemingly normative power structures. The book tells the journey of a woman contemplating her body, sexuality and sense of self and highlights wider issues of connectedness and othered identities. This human has no desire to accept or assimilate mainstream versions of queerness.

Sour-Puss takes the viewer on a journey that is determined by imperfection, shaming, isolation, and a seemingly futile search for meaning and belonging. Four years in the making, the notion of Sour-Puss: The Opera has become more poignant as world events have made us individually and collectively search for ways of breaking free from everyday life while catching a glimpse of who we really are.

The book comprising photographs and drawings was introduced by GOST Books at Paris Photo earlier this month and will be available at bookstores from December. A limited number of signed advance copies will be available on the night.

Diogo Duarte is an Edinburgh based, Portuguese artist specialising in queer self-portraiture and psychological portraits of other people. With a background in mental health and bereavement support, his primarily lens-based practice explores themes of queerness, ego, identity, expression and repression and mental health.

Jessica Mitchell is a Brooklyn-born, London-based artist specialising in drawing and needlework. With a particular focus on working collaboratively her art is informed by an interest in issues of identity and internal worlds and by her work as a psychotherapist.