On Thursday night in London, Dazed teamed up with London gallery Mimosa House for the launch of EXCHANGE: an initiative powered by Burberry to foster collaboration and support creative communities. Off the back of Pride month, the inaugural EXCHANGE focused on celebrating queer artists, all while championing creativity, performance, and the broader arts in the method. On the night, guests hopped between venues to witness a series of video works, innovative performance pieces, and DJ sets from London’s most enjoyable creative talent, loads of whom caused quite the stir. Here’s what went down. 

Now certainly one of London’s most significant queer spaces, Mimosa House was founded in 2017 by curator Daria Khan, a longtime champion for LGBTQIA+, POC, and diasporic artists. EXCHANGE: LONDON proceedings began within the early evening on the gallery in Holborn, where guests watched video installations from choreographer and performer Marikiscrycrycry and the African-Mexican video artist Vir Andres Hera. 

Because the clock struck seven, Maltese artist Romeo Roxman Gatt kicked off the night’s performances with a live piece alongside his film Smoke Machine, Lion and Jeep (2021). As within the film, Gatt performs a dance piece for the gang, a love letter to his younger self – a footballer, pre-transition, misunderstood by those around him – constructing in momentum until reaching its crescendo under the pumping music and strobe lights of a club. 

The audience included a few of Dazed’s other favourite artists, like Michael Moon, Bones Tan Jones, and this yr’s Frieze London winner Adham Faramawy, while drinks from Heineken Silver and Select Aperitivo’s spritz kept guests hydrated.

Time for a venue jump. After walking the short distance to 180 Strand with some beers for the road, guests arrived at Dazed Space for the subsequent performance on EXCHANGE’s line up, curated by Khan to showcase a few of Mimosa House’s community. 

This next stage of the evening was even busier, with tons of of guests coming together to collect around semi-opaque plastic sheeting masking a surgery-room-like installation that may change into a part of the evening’s second performance piece, delivered – quite literally – by trans-species artist Agnes Questionmark. 

Agnes Questionmark creates immersive habitats that query the human body, its genesis and future potentialities of becoming. As a part of the piece Attempt 1: Transgenic Mutation Experiment (2022), Questionmark performed surgeries on a man-made womb atop a medical table, putting it through a means of metamorphosis to disclose the creature inside, delivering its birth as guests looked on in awe and at moments, horror. Over the course of the performance, strange bodily matter, blood, and a non-human organism emerged, while guests attempted to capture what they were seeing on their phones.

With the gang still digesting the performances over a drink, across town a celebration kicked off at East London queer club Queen of Adelaide to mark the launch of the brand new initiative. 

The primary set got here courtesy of Pxssy Palace founder and DJ Nadine Noor – who also took over the Dazed Instagram on the night. Next up, London DJ Basmati filled the dancefloor while photographer Roxy Lee documented the night and Dazed members of the family – like director Iggy London and artist Rene Matić – propped up the bar. 

To increase their support beyond the all-queer lineup of talent for the evening, as a part of EXCHANGE, Burberry capped the night off with a donation to Mimosa House, to amplify their work supporting next generation queer artists beyond Pride month.

Due to Heineken Silver and Select Aperitivo for keeping the party going.

Take a look at images from the event by photographer Roxy Lee and Dazed Club members Holly Lavelle and PIXXX within the gallery above.