“During 2021, subsequent to the pandemic period, I felt moved by an urge to have to communicate something. The circumstances and the changes in our shifting social and cultural spectrum, I was influenced me in what I still consider to be a personal quest primarily, but which inevitably becomes political discourse and social inclusiveness,” says photographer Jessica Mariani.

Gender Queen is a project on identity, a word, a complex of characters and traits that distinguish each individual, each body, in any time and place. And starting precisely from this strong “queer” attitude of the present, Mariani has researched the deepest roots of this language; starting from history she’s delved deep into what it means to own identity, what are the biological and social factors that define us or include us. How important is our appearance in the the eyes of others to have a self-definition of one’s self, one’s identity, and sexuality. A long and winding path and one that will never be definitive in the face of the advances in socio-cultural progress that is taking shape. These are the portraits in my photos, my favourite subjects who are nothing but free bodies, free to be themselves.

Jessica Mariani was born in Ravenna in 2000; she became passionate about the world of art, earning a diploma at the Liceo Artistico di Ravenna, specializing in Audiovisual Multimedia. She then approached the world of cinema, undertaking a three-year course of studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and then continuing her own path at the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern film school in Bologna. He has held several internships as assistant director and assistant editor in Ravenna between 2016 and 2019, and in 2022 she did an internship as a cultural mediator at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome. She exhibited a multimedia work in Faro, Portugal for the group exhibition Empoa Poema and participated in the photography exhibition Reclaim The Tech in Bologna in March 2023; in 2022 she was invited to the 79th International Film Festival in Venice for the Campari Movie Contest selection and in May 2023 she traveled to the Cannes International Film Festival selected by the call for accreditation to film enthusiasts. In October 2023, at the Vegan Festival in Ravenna, she exhibited as part of a group show at FaroArte Gallery.