Almanacco Toilet Club

From 2014 to 2016, Valentina Neri worked on Toilet Club Milano, a club where a group of drag queens created a party out of nowhere and entered into the map as one of the most important in the Milan's gay clubbing scenes.

After portraying characters’ growth and the colorful atmosphere, she continues her project working on the output. The main inspiration for the book ALMANACCO TOILET CLUB is “La Scena Illustrata 1941”, an influential Italian monthly publication born in 1884, which focused on current events with an ironic and direct style.

Her research drove her illustrating the queer world while experimenting with different languages.

Photographs, video, descriptions, titles, illustrations, presentations, quotes and its fascist layout, taken get from the original magazine, talks about a group of people in a free way while giving readers the possible different interpretations.

Preface.

Do you know the fraise “it’s like a big family”? With all its positive connotations, full of affection, joy and the Christian spirit of sharing? Now then, think of your family. How thankful are you not to have to deal with them every single day of your life? Or how frustrated are you of the contrary? No one wants to entertain themselves with their own family, let alone with an expended simulacrum of their own, cacophonous and definitely way too gaudy. Sure, you’ll have the comfort of not necessarily having to clean yourself, or hiding your vilest inclinations, the freedom to let lose, nay to walk around in your underwear. But be honest, are you really interested in knowing the last menopause-dye color of your aunt, or that your cousin has lost half a pound in six months which makes her think a shooting from below is a great idea? No, you’re not interested in any of it. As you’re not interested in knowing that has been years, six to be precise, that this circus sideshow drag queens, born on the Naviglio like sewer rats, are boring us at Toilet Club, every damn Saturday night. As you’re not interested, neither in finding out the arcane symbology of fake nails, nor how to make it that a simple corset will transform you into a boiler.

Anyway, someone once said that happiness is disinterested knowledge.

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