Drawing from queer histories and utopian visions, Guillaume Vandame (b.1991, New York) is known for artworks which examine LGBTQIA+ equality, representation, and identity. Vandame often uses readymade materials and found objects and methods of production which invoke a sense of the ephemeral and the transformation of the banal and everyday to the sacred and transcendental.
Working site-specifically and disrupting space through sculptural installations and conceptual interventions, the artist's projects have included transforming the ICA Studio into a free gym as a collaboration with Josh Wright for fig-2 curated by FatoÅŸ Üstek at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London in 2015, leading a walk through the City of London for LGBTQIA+ people and queer allies for the annual arts festival, Nocturnal Creatures 2019, and symbols (2019-2021), a sculptural installation of thirty unique flags ranging from gender identity, sexuality, and desire, presented for first time at Leadenhall Market in the City of London as part of the 10th and 11th editions of Sculpture in the City, London between 2021 and 2023.
Vandame's series Lovers (2017-), began as a response to the post-war American histories of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Conceptualism, through a series of digital drawings made with the artist's touch on an iPhone and then printed on canvas as unique digital paintings, reminiscent of Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and the homoerotic work of Andy Warhol. Lovers express emotion, queer intimacy, passion, and memory, while coolly removing the artist's hand and touch through mechanical printing to evoke a screen or a portal to another world. The 'paintings' were then the starting point of new exhibitions such as Sexy Pizza Dance (2019), featuring sculptural assemblages and happenings with live music, pizza, and poetry, and, nightsweats (2020), featuring an artist book with contributions with twenty artists and writers including cover art by Sunil Gupta as a tribute to Thom Gunn's seminal book of poetry "The Man with Night Sweats" (1992) and a birthday party with poetry for Thom Gunn in August 2020.
After taking part in the Open House 2019-2020 artist residency at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Guillaume Vandame's interest in collaboration, community, and audience participation intensified with projects including Love is Lighter Than Air (2020), a collection of handmade rainbow artworks made by the public during the pandemic, A Brief History of Rainbows (2021), a video essay examining the status of the rainbow as a symbol for the LGBTQIA+ community, and symbols (2019-2021), celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community in public space as part of the global campaign for human rights and equality.
In 2022, Guillaume Vandame, alongside his partner Brody Mace-Hopkins, were selected as part of the CIRCA x Dazed Class of 2022. I love you (2022) was simultaneously presented in September 2022 in four cities: London, Seoul, Berlin, and Melbourne, marking a significant moment in their collaborative practice and becoming, in the artist's words, "a love letter to the world."