Funded projects:

Chiara Amoretti - My proposed post-doctoral project would look at Franko B.’s body art and autobiography, Because of Love, as performances of queer martyrdom. I aim to study his use of blood-shedding, self-torture and leakage in connection with queer theology and art history.

Robin Craig - My proposed postdoctoral project with the CHHS explores transitional bodies in Franko B’s work as points were binary categories of gender, class, race, and dis/ability collapse. The project will analyse how Franko B portrays bodies in transformative or liminal states, such as blood-letting in Oh Lover Boy, to challenge audiences to reflect on their own embodiment. The Franko B Archive material will be crucial in understanding how Franko B’s relationship with embodiment has changed over his thirty-year career, notably through the interview transcripts, correspondence and personal ephemera. 

Fran Dossin - Franko B’s works deal with emotions as a primal element, revealing ways of loving and suffering. His works can be read as open wounds. They are not only personal but also social wounds, attained by refusing to conform to societal norms. With this in mind, I would like to explore the imagery of emotions contained in the Franko B archive, using an existentialist and phenomenological approach to understand how these feelings inform us about a contemporary way of being in the world.