Tom Hallet (b. 1990, Leuven) is based in Brussels, who presents his drawings as visual letters, addressed to LGBTQIA+members, their violators and their family members. He brings these individuals, and their personal storylines, together in an inclusive, spiritual space; a huis clos. Hallet facilitates a place of encounter, where they can enter into dialogue, and perhaps even find forgiveness and healing posthumously. Throughout history, fairy tales have been used as ways of conditioning certain narratives about gender roles. These tropes have subsequently marginalised sexuality. By illustrating untold stories, using similar aesthetics as displayed in those fairy tales, Hallet subverts these traditions and proposes a narrative reinvention of queer history. On show: The beluga whale’s voice is one out of ancient tales, from when pirates and sailors, colonisers and priests roamed the seas, looking for land. Beneath the hulls of their boats, out of the azure blue depths, voices re-sur- face, embodied by fishlike mammals. They are called the keepers of souls, of prisoners, of pixies, of slaves, of fairies, of hostages, of prostitutes. Here, the skin hangs like a trophy. It is caught and slaughtered, dried and preserved. Just like in queer history, the eradication and exploitation of queerness are inevitably intertwined. As much as the presence and influence of queer people are undeniable within Western history, this form of cancel culture brought an inherited feeling of statelessness over many generations. - Tom Hallet and Rachel Norman