OUR EUROPEAN UNION (WEDDING)

Our European Union (Wedding) intersects the personal, political and performative.

After the Brexit referendum on Thursday 23rd June 2016, A de la Fe (Spain) and Robert Vesty (UK) went to a queer party and with many others drowned their sorrows. And in the midst of all the beautiful loving people dressed-up and donning brave faces at a LGBTQIA+ pride party (Duckie), Vesty and de la Fe decided to form their own “European union” by getting married. Until then the idea of marriage hadn’t made much sense to either of them; they felt ambivalent about it as an institution, that it somehow didn’t represent the kind of relationship they had grown and hoped to continue to grow over the years to come. But after that seismic and catastrophic event, itself a product of too much pain, hate and division in the world, marriage suddenly made total sense. This wasn’t just a pragmatic choice; in fact, marriage did not easily grant either of them a “green card” to move to Spain or stay in the UK, but, in the context of the unfolding events marriage seemed to them an act of pride, love, hope and resistance and suddenly became meaningful and symbolic. Vesty and de la Fe did the legal bit with 50 guests on Monday 26th September 2016 in East Ham and followed that some months later with a big performance festival style fiesta with 250 guests at the Hackney Showroom on Sunday 27th May 2017.