In Queerskins: a love story VR experience, participants construct the semi-fictional character of Sebastian, a young gay physician from a rural Catholic Missouri family who dies of AIDS in 1990, by interacting with a box of his belongings, photographs and a diary.

Commissioned by the Tribeca Film Festival, where the work premiered, we created an immersive interactive installation, a recreation of Sebastian’s childhood attic bedroom, transformed by imagination and memory. We asked visitors to consider their own stories of love and loss, and, as they went through the installation, to find an object that spoke to this. A photographer then photographed them with the objects and invited them to share, in writing, the object’s personal significance. These are the photographs and stories you will find here.

By creating a simultaneosly shared and solitary experience in which shame, the loss of love and acceptance, and transcendence intermingle and are made visible, Queerskins established a safe space for emotional contemplation. We are grateful and honored that our art has been a catalyst for this.

Illya Szilak
Cyril Tsiboulski