Using innovative body mapping techniques of a film made up of thousands of found images, Franko B revisits his seminal bloodletting works for the first time in his practice. Each cut challenging the audience to confront their own history, a global history of war, abandonment, homophobia, freedom, displacement, famine and sex. (The film and body mapping were produced in collaboration with Anthony Martin from a/political, under the direction of Franko B, using content provided by the artist to realise his concept.)

Starting out performing at fetish nights in London’s underground club scene, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Franko B used bodily fluids to confront the audience with the ongoing reality of the virus. By the mid-90s, Franko B had begun performing in world class institutions such as the ICA, the Arnolfini, South London Gallery and Tate Modern, attracting both applause and criticism for his radical approach.

In I’m Here, present but disembodied, Franko B provides a portrait of our failing society. As the artist bleeds for a world that is hemorrhaging to death, pain and nostalgia emit to expose how Franko B became who he is amongst all of the shit.

“Every day I’m trying to make sense of my extended time here. The past is part of our present. It never left us but is evolving rather than repeating; it is continuing to allow us to make the same mistakes. I believe this is valid for both the personal and the political. I'm Here is trying to express these two connected worlds. It doesn’t revisit the past romantically or melancholically in the context of our political and social histories but questions and reinterprets it.” – Franko B