Organ Preview: After Taboo, Poulomi Desai and Ron Athey with Hermes Pittakos – “After Taboo takes inspiration from the fearless spirit of Leigh Bowery. This event brings together boundary-defying self-taught artists Poulomi Desai and Ron Athey (in collaboration with Hermes Pittakos) for a night of performances in Tate Modern’s underground Tank. Celebrate the power of art to challenge and overturn social norms”.

Never have worked out what self-taught means when it comes to artists, isn’t that all of us? Seems like an age and a half since we last encountered Mr Athey in the flesh, it was actually at a couple of performances at Bristol’s Arnolfini and somewhere in Birmingham. Ron Athey is an artist and performer who always throws up interesting questions as well as beautiful contradictions.

The performances happen on Saturday 1st March 2025 (7pm until 9.30pm) at Tate Modern, London. 

Willendorf by Ron Athey with Hermes Pittakos: For the creation of Willendorf, Athey invited long time collaborator, friend, and sculptor, Hermes Pittakos to revisit and re-contextualise The Trojan Whore, a performance Athey staged in 1996 in memoriam of the late artist Leigh Bowery. Willendorf follows a two-act structure. Symbols of fertility and martydom from ancient times meet Athey’s signature endurance aesthetics as the artist becomes a totem of non-reproductive futurity, resistance, power, and revitalisation. There is of course a Leigh Bowery exhibition opening at the Tate on February 27th – A celebration of the boundary-pushing career of artist Leigh Bowery

Storms of the Heart: Queering the Cosmos of Memory is a new series of performance evocations created by Poulomi Desai. Poulomi has Invited artists Andy Kumar, Jaivant Patel, Ms. Mohammed, Osman Yosefzada and Raisa Kabir to join her in the collective experience. This work imagines queer South Asian futures through the lens of a turbulent, powerless, and often forgotten past that includes UK South Asian outsider, queer clubs and alternative cultures since the 1980’s. The piece explores themes of power and powerlessness through vignettes that address the tensions between self-affirmation and societal rejection, liberation, love, and loss. Drawing from South Asian Diaspora histories of resilience, mythology, queer theory, and postcolonial thought, it navigates a world where we are revered and reviled, powerful and powerless.

Blending South Asian rituals and noise art with live multimedia elements and movement-based choreography, Storms of the Heart creates an immersive, visceral experience of what it means to exist and love across time, space and AI, despite the fears and conflicts of the present. In this world, community memory, identity, and queer liberation exist in fluid, dynamic states. Tate’s South Tank serves as both a repository and a membrane—a space to reflect on what we leave behind, preserve, and dream for the future.

Artist biographies…

Ron Athey – Born in 1961, Ron Athey is a Los Angeles-based artist who has been making performance works since 1981s Premature Ejaculation, an actionist/noise duo with Rozz Williams. Self-taught, Athey’s earliest works were inspired by Johanna Went, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, and electro-punk/queercore pioneers Nervous Gender. By the 90s the HIV/AIDS pandemic shifted response and this work, the “torture trilogy” became passion plays. In 2023 Athey and Pittakos launched an immersive art making workshop in Athens, Greece titled Darkness Visible. Current video work includes their collaborative series of post-porn-mythologies including Asclepius/Acephale, The Hierophant, and Pasiphae, Witch Queen of Crete: A Gloryhole Origin Story. Athey is represented by Murmurs Gallery, Los Angeles.

Hermes Pittakos (b. 1986, Larnaca, Cyprus) is an Athens-based craftsman, sculptor and performer whose multidisciplinary practice explores themes of decay, transformation, and the divine. His haunting imagery delves into boundaries between  physicality and immaterial visceral organic beauty. With a Background in Fine Art, Character Development & Prosthetics, Pittakos integrates mythology and cycles of existence into contemporary narratives, storytelling through body and sculpture both as the medium and subject.

Since 2011, Pittakos has collaborated extensively with artist Ron Athey on performances, films, sculpture pieces and workshops. Pittakos has exhibited internationally at venues such as MOCA as part of Skopje Pride, Enter Art Foundation Berlin, and Collectif Opium Paris. He is part of Fantastic Toiles, a sustainable art/fashion nomadic concept shop that supports independent artists, where he goes by Higher Sense Studio, here he continues to  evolve his sculptural and performative work by merging it with wearable fashion.
Poulomi Desai

Poulomi Desai, born in London, is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, curator and carer, with over 30 years of work spanning performance, sound, live art, and photography. Her art explores identity, listening, and perception, influenced by her Black/Asian, Queer, and Activist background, as well as Fluxus movements and DIY post-punk. Desai co-founded Shakti, the first South Asian LGBTQ+ club and organisation, the NAZ HIV/AIDS project, and HAC, a South Asian punk performance company. Her art employs diverse media, from collage and video to bacterial photography and VLF radio noise. Known for transforming broken sitars into electronic instruments, she also uses circuit-bent toys, modified cassette decks, and more.

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