Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art
 

Belladonna Paloma

A fabric banner with artwork on it hangs from a tree, it features writing that reads "From Bogge We Emerge"
Three people wearing off white cloaks face each other and smile. They pass a stick wrapped in rope to one another.
Three people wearing off white cloaks lead a group of people through a woodland.
Three people wearing off white cloaks stand near, and sit on, a tree. One is holding a wooden rod wrapped in rope.
Three people wearing off white cloaks group together. One person is standing up while two other people kneel in front of them, resting a wooden pole against their cloak.
Three people wearing off white cloaks lead a group of people through a boggy peatland on a wooden walkway.
A photograph showing a sun-bleached greyish lambs skull against a white wall. On the top of the forehead of the skull, in bright fluorescent pink paint, an egg with its shadow behind it has been painted.
a close up of a person performing in front of a green hill with an old stone building on top. He is covered with a muddy mixture, wearing a pink neckerchief with a bare chest. His head is tilted, his eyes are closed and he looks blissful. There are two people watching him in the background.
An oval ceramic plate on a white wall. The ceramic is a tan brown colour with an inky black drawing of a monk bending over a stone dolman in prayer. In front there are two crutches in the grass, crossed over each other. Above, some clouds and a round moon are visible.

Rabindranath X Bhose,  Belladonna Paloma and Oren Shoesmith are three friends and co-conspirators who form a boggy trans crip collective. They collaborate on bog-related projects, in devotion to the ecological potency of wetlands.

The images shown above represent the Glasgow International 2024 project that Belladonna Paloma is participating in, as well as the artist’s individual practice.

Belladonna Paloma is an artist, poet & trans witch living on a remote croft in the Shetland Isles. She paints, tattoos, writes poetry, and makes computer games. Her work is into listening to faeries, how divination disturbs linear time, grief rituals, toilet gods and necromancy. Bella makes art as acts of devotion. This devotion has most recently centred on Shetland’s boglands, and wetlands more generally, continuing her interest in the politics and mysticism of what we choose to call ‘waste’. Some places her work has been published and exhibited by: The Overkill Festival, Netherlands, in collaboration with Uma Breakdown (2023), IMT Gallery, London (2023), Collective, Edinburgh, in collaboration with Rabindranath X Bhose and Oren Shoesmith (2023), Vital Capacities (2023), Sluice Magazine (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art, London (2023), TISSUEPAPER Magazine (2023), Gropius Bau, Berlin, in collaboration with Daniella Valz Gen (2023), Gaada, Shetland (2023), Sticky Fingers Publishing (2023), Art Licks (2022), Two Queens, Leicester (2022), Abingdon Studios Project Space, Blackpool (2022), Cariboo Projects, Bristol (2021), and Supernormal Festival, Oxfordshire (2019). Her book-length poem about Bigfoot, There’s always things falling out the sky, was published by Pink Sands Studio Press, 2021

Projects