Forgive us our yearnings is a performative reading of passages on sexual desire and erotic experience drawn from both personal writings and published works. Responding to works in the exhibition Forgive us our Trespasses that depict corporal desire and pleasure that defy social conventions uphold taboos on the body, the reading serves as an audio and visual activation, echoing the practice of Myriam Omar Awadi, I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, Dorothy Iannone, Felix de Rooy, and others. By exploring the expansive, self-expanding, and yet often spurned site of sexuality, Forgive us our yearnings pronounces the exhilaration, interconnection, transformation, vulnerability and, at times, pain that reside in sexual desire while denouncing sexual norms that tend towards indifference, individualism, and sensual deprivation.

Four cultural practitioners and activists from Berlin’s queer and/or literary communities are invited as the readers of this event:

Anne Aradi is a queer feminist, activist, and artist based in Berlin, deeply committed to social justice and amplifying marginalized voices. 

Popo Fan is a film-maker, writer, and artist from China who is at the moment exploring sex as a mythology of representation in both his life and artworks.

Mary Lee is a writer, translator, editor, and art practitioner currently based in Hong Kong and Berlin.

Matagumpay is a visual artist, writer, and performer making work about devotion and transition. He is trans/gender fluid and Filipino raised in the US.