POLARI, A DICTIONARY OF THE BODY

These ten, lavender-hued photographs are a visual dictionary of a hidden language — polari. Polari is a queer-coded lexicon — variously described by scholars as a proto-language or linguistic styling — that emerged from Mediterranean ports, circuses, and theatrical cultures in the late eighteenth century. Drawing from Italian, French, Spanish, English, and Arabic, polari functioned as a system of verbal signifiers through which queer people identified kinship and signaled desire. Though limited to roughly one hundred words and lacking formal syntax, polari’s adaptability allowed it to be embedded within multiple mother tongues, ensuring both secrecy and mobility. Terms such as drag, butch, and trade persist today, evidencing polari’s evolution from coded speech to cultural inheritance.

Polari, a dictionary of the body

Chromogenic colour print
12 x 15 in | Edition of 3 plus 2 artist proofs
40 x 50in | Edition of 1 plus 1 artist proof

2025