Hank D. Wüstenberg’s art explores care, intimacy, participation, and queer world-building. With a background in performing music internationally to increase Butch's visibility (2001-2016), Hank became increasingly interested in stripping down to the essence and making social relations the core medium of their art. By (re-)creating spaces for exchange, mutual support, and collective experience, their projects aim to foster coalitions beyond established institutional and social structures.

 

From 2015 to 2026, Hank D. Wüstenberg has developed and led BUTCH CUT, a long-term project that employed haircuts as an interactive, performative social practice to convey care and belonging through conversations for queer, trans* and non-binary-identified community members. Over 8000 haircuts were performed on roughly 3000 participants from all around the world. Parallel projects, like TAKE CARE (2021), disseminated tools for collective care through workshops, screenings, discussions, and interactive performances in collaboration with like-minded artists.

 

Hank D. Wüstenberg combines artistic, curatorial, and research-based practices to produce multilayered decolonial knowledges through participation and lived experiences. Their most recent work focuses on inspiring inter-queer coalitions and investigating how utopian, self-organized spaces strengthen the collective imagination and shared queer world-making capacity, allowing for joyfully nourishing queer futurities amid current right-wing backlash.