Tarek Lakhrissi

Tarek Lakhrissi is a multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, film, installation, and language. Rooted in queer and critical perspectives, his practice explores desire, self-determination, and resistance through minoritarian narratives. Drawing from literature, pop culture, and myth, he builds emotional and political landscapes where vulnerability becomes strength. Blending speculative aesthetics, science fiction, and transformative symbols, Lakhrissi creates sensorial environments as sanctuaries for survival, care, and collective dreaming. His use of voice and body reflects a commitment to art as a site of address and imagination, inviting audiences to rethink power structures and envision futures shaped by tenderness and rebellion.

HOW DOES YOUR SUBMITTED WORK RESPOND TO THE CIRCA 20:25 MANIFESTO?
Bright Heart (2023) is an incantation. A queer, racialized protagonist escapes a violent man and finds refuge in a haunted, erotic museum, where mythical beings guide his transformation into a vampire. In the final scene, he defends himself, is blessed, and embraces his lover. Against rising global LGBTQIAP+ hate, especially in the UK, the film is a sensual, political gesture resisting fear and erasure. Refuge is not escape but transformation: myth, desire, and ritual forge spaces for survival. The museum becomes a queer ecology where intimacy is resistance, softness is strength, and love is a weapon—a spell of heat and visibility.

IF AWARDED THE £30,000 CIRCA PRIZE, WHAT 10-MINUTE WORK WOULD YOU CREATE – AND HOW WOULD IT EMBODY THE SPIRIT OF REFUGIA?
For the CIRCA Prize, I propose RISING II: The Ballad of the Angel, a 10-minute poetic 3D film expanding my 2023 work RISING for KANAL-Centre Pompidou. Transposed to the monumental surface of Piccadilly Lights, the film follows a lone digital angel, myself, walking slowly through a post-apocalyptic world. No dialogue, no climax: only breath, ruins, and persistence. Moving through scorched landscapes, submerged monuments, and glitching memories, the angel embodies grief as a queer technology of resistance. Built with intricate 3D modeling and an original orchestral score, RISING II offers a radical softness and a public, luminous pause against far-right politics and LGBTQIA+ violence.

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Funding for the CIRCA PRIZE is generated entirely by the #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model that reinvests proceeds from affordable art sold on CIRCA.ART into new public art commissions, charitable causes, art education and prizes. Since launching in 2020, the initiative has raised over £1 Million, placing artists and communities at the centre of an economy that continually reinvests in the future of art and culture.

The CIRCA PRIZE 2025 winners will be revealed LIVE in Piccadilly Circus on Monday 13 October, with a special 30-minute award ceremony starting at 20:00 BST. Don’t miss it!