Photography by Sage Yodit.
Agnes Questionmark is an artist whose work traverses the corporeal, the surreal, and the posthuman. Rooted in mythology, medical science, and a personal cosmology, her practice unfolds like a tragic play: one in which identity is unstable, failure is generative, and transformation is always underway. Trained in both performance and visual art, Agnes Questionmark constructs her world through hybrid beings and surgical interventions. Whether working in her studio or somewhere else, she challenges the limits of body, technology, and authorship. To SLEEK, she talks about her art and workspace.
SLEEK Your work blends the surreal with the corporeal. How does a concept evolve in your studio?
AGNES QUESTIONMARK Agnes has always been a spiritual entity – an elusive being I’ve tried to give physical life through my work. My practice began with sending letters to myself, becoming both sender and recipient. I consider myself a playwright of my own mythology. My performances are acts in a personal tragedy – the impossibility of finding Agnes, or myself, in a world where identity and aura dissolve under capitalism. Agnes is a creature born from constant failure – an ever-mutating being that reflects a collapsing human paradigm. My studio is a surgical theater where everything breaks, but that destruction is essential to transformation.
Photography by Sage Yodit.
S How does your studio space affect your materials and scale?
AQ Moving to New York was shocking: tiny studios, barely livable. I chose a windowless space at Pratt to embrace the absurdity of being an artist in confinement. There, I created unauthorized works that tested my body and institutional limits, turning the walls into a physical extension of my psyche. That’s where my 2-D practice began.
Now in Rome, I have more space and work with a team of skilled technicians. I focus on large-scale installations and also on paintings and experimental sculptures. It feels freeing and different – and I like that.
S Your work often explores transformation and identity. How do these ideas show up in your art?
AQ Our bodies carry the tools for transformation, but we must learn to engage them ethically, in dialogue with all forms of life and technology. Posthumanism, as Braidotti frames it, is an active belief – a verb, not a fixed identity.
We’ve already become posthuman: our bodies are commodified, our identities absorbed into technocapitalist systems. Preciado calls this the “pharmacopornographic” era. Trans, disabled, and non-white bodies most visibly embody this shift – but the potential for transformation exists in all of us, even if it’s invisible.
In my performances, I become hybrid beings – part-human, part-miscreation – creatures always in gestation but never fully emerging. Failure is central: it opens up the unexpected, the unplanned, the uncontrollable.
Photography by Sage Yodit.
S Any daily rituals in your studio?
AQ I read before I work – sci-fi, theory, literature. It helps ideas gestate quietly. Changing into studio clothes is my transition ritual. I once watched a robotic surgery and was struck by how theatrical it felt. I don’t sterilize myself – I dress to get messy.
I listen to minimal music like Lorenzo Senni and Caterina Barbieri to focus. I multitask – painting with silicone while prepping resin molds. This tentacular method reflects my broader practice, where materials and media bleed into each other.
S Any works-in-progress you’re excited about?
AQ Yes, my silicone paintings. I learned the technique from my friend Anthr0morph, starting with a mermaid tail. Silicone mimics flesh and texture – I now mix it with oil paint to create vibrant, visceral works. They resemble the internal spaces of my creatures – organs, tissue, skin. These pieces are now entering institutional exhibitions, like one in Frankfurt.
S How do science, mythology, and your own body shape your work?
AQ I grew up on a boat – my father was a sailor. When I was eight, he threw me into the sea with an oxygen tank. I loved free-diving, the bliss of holding my breath and dissolving into water. That sensation of detachment and ecstasy drives my performances.
Medicalization has also deeply influenced my work. We live under inescapable surveillance. I use medical tools in my pieces to subvert that control – to claim agency within it. That’s what posthumanism means to me.
Photography by Sage Yodit.
S What projects are you working on now?
AQ I’m working on my largest installation yet, in Rome. It weaves together my upbringing – my sailor father and pharmacist mother – with my research on advanced medical tech and how it reshapes our understanding of the body.
CREDITS
Photography by Sage Yodit
Styling by Silas Lev