by Valerie Reding

Valerie Reding, *Bruna*, digital photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

HVNGRY for more

Valerie Reding | JUN 2026 | Issue 52

Featured Artist

"Welcome to our pantheon of queer icons, where otherness, diversity and vulnerability are nurtured, shared and celebrated. We are HVNGRY for more — hungry for more tolerance, more respect, more freedom, more visibility, more protection, more rights, more solidarity and more love!"

HVNGRY for more is a series of portraits that I created in 2021, celebrating queer people with diverse bodies, cultural and social backgrounds, sexualities, gender identities and their various expressions. Strongly inspired by the aesthetics "camp", pop culture and video game, I created their heroine-alter-egos, exploring alternative representations of QTBIPoC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Color) — far beyond gender binaries or other alienating social categorisations.

I created the looks and hand-crafted the costumes, accessories and makeup for each person with respect for their desires and boundaries, ensuring that these representations are aligned with their individual wishes, biographies, identities, gender expressions, body images and cultural origins. As I am eager to provide a transformative experience for the people that I portray, everything is achieved by the means of makeup, costume making and working with lights — the images have not been altered in post-production nor with CGI.

Valerie Reding, *Elie*, digital photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Valerie Reding, *Edwin*, digital photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Valerie Reding, *Giuila*, digital photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Valerie Reding, *NewKyd*, digital photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Valerie Reding, *Sun*, digital photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Valerie Reding is a choreographer, performer and transdisciplinary artist based in Luxembourg and Switzerland. After their training in classical ballet and modern dance in Luxembourg, they studied Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and Media Arts at the Universities of the Arts in Zurich (ZHdK) and Vienna (Angewandte). Besides their academic studies, they worked internationally as a makeup artist in fashion, and explored the art of drag in San Francisco’s and Zurich’s nightlife.

Today, they incorporate all these experiences into their eclectic artistic practice combining and oscillating between movement, performance, photography, video, text and installation. They work independently as well as collaboratively in varying contexts ranging from alternative and underground spaces to theaters, galleries and other cultural institutions.

Intrigued by the complex entanglements of the body, human psychology, interpersonal relationships and the systems of oppression that permeate our societies and identities, Valerie Reding explores the potential of vulnerability, auto-fiction, togetherness, transformation and camp to work on questions around subjectivity and relationality with an intersectional approach.

They have performed at festivals like La Bâtie (Geneva), zürich moves!, Zürich Tanzt, World Expo 2020 (Dubaï), The Queer Biennial II (Los Angeles), FdS - Festival artistique des affects, des genres et des sexualités (Lausanne), Superball (Amsterdam) and Queer Little Lies (Luxembourg) as well as at theaters like Rote Fabrik (Zurich), Tanzhaus Zürich, Dampfzentrale (Bern), Arsenic (Lausanne), Théâtre St. Gervais (Geneva), Counterpulse (San Francisco), Le 140 (Brussels) and Escher Theater (Luxembourg). Their works have been shown in galleries such as Istituto Svizzero (Milan), Commonwealth & Council (Los Angeles), Casino - Forum d’Art Contemporain (Luxembourg), Last Tango (Zurich), Kulturfolger (Zurich), FORMA Art Contemporain (Lausanne) and LAC (Vevey).