Exploring The Self || Desire & Self-Expression || Photographing with Adrián Coto 01

Photographing the Self, the Other, the Collective
with Adrián Coto

This programme of three workshops uses photography — alongside movement, drawing, analog manipulation and collective reflection — as a tool for self-inquiry, relational exploration, and communal image-making. 

Each workshop explores a distinct approach while sharing a common methodology: using creative practices as a way of generating knowledge and exploring intimacy with ourselves, our relationships, and the communities we inhabit.

Participants are invited to deepen self-awareness, foster meaningful connections, and reflect on the collective experiences that shape our lives through the process of image-making rather than technical ability. The focus is on experimentation, reflection, and discovery.

The third workshop is presented in collaboration with Uncensored Festivaland explores the creation of explicit content.

The series can be attended as a complete journey or as individual workshops.

All levels of experience are welcome

Workshop 1: Exploring The Self — Desire & Self-Expression
This workshop is clothed. Kink expression and representation are welcome; partial nudity may be negotiated between participants.

This workshop takes desire as its starting point; not as a fixed category, but as a source of knowledge and a creative, expressive language. Through a series of exercises leading towards self-portraiture, participants will explore The Self through themes of play, kink, power, identity and embodiment.

The aim is not representation but exploration: using photography to give form to aspects of ourselves that rarely find space in everyday life.

This event is open to people of all genders and backgrounds. We maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward xenophobia, homophobia, ableism, or any form of discrimination. The venue is fully accessible and includes an accessible bathroom, cloakroom, and changing room. There is a sober bar.

This event is part of Stück cultural programme curated by Lidia Ravviso.

Duration: 3  hours
Required: Phone or camera, plus any production materials listed in the preparation PDF that will be sent over before the workshop
Optional: Lighting tools, camera/phone, tripod, etc.

Bio

Adrián Coto is a London based Latin American visual artist whose practice blends sculptural assemblage, photography, and critical theory to explore how bodies are shaped, read, and politicised. Their work interrogates the materiality of the body and the construction of gendered and othered subjectivities, drawing from queer methodologies, assemblage theory, and nonextractive, conversational forms of collaboration.

A graduate of the University of Westminster’s MA Photography Arts (Distinction) and trained in psychology at the University of Costa Rica, Adrián’s researchactive practice spans performance, installation, body casting, and experimental photographic sculpture. 

They are the cofounder of Displaced Materials Lab, an internationally exhibited collective examining political inscription and abjection in visual culture. Their work has been shown in London, Amsterdam, Madrid, and Central America, earning recognition including the Arts Council England Global Talent Visa and First Prize in Fine Art Photography at Expofoto Central America and the Caribbean.

Alongside their artistic practice, Adrián designs inclusive, decolonial pedagogical frameworks and teaches across photography, performance, and critical visual theory.

www.senorbabe.com