“How do you feel?” The question—posed again and again by the narrator of Joel Quayson’s short film How Do You Feel?—echoes as Quayson, a student at the Hague’s Royal Academy of Art, dresses and undresses in front of the camera. He pulls a simple white shirt over his head, its open collar revealing a silver cross. How do you feel? He tugs on a fuzzy pink balaclava—a frame for sad eyes bedazzled with fuchsia glitter and shimmering crystals. How do you feel? He removes the shirt. He wipes away the makeup. How do you feel?
“Compact. Raw. Real. It questions you. You question him. The concept is simple but pure,” says Peter Philips, creative and image director for Dior Makeup. He and fellow jurors—including partner institution Luma Arles’s founder Maja Hoffmann and artists from around the globe—awarded Quayson the 2025 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents at the annual Rencontres d’Arles photo festival. “There’s such a heaviness behind it: He wants his parents to see who he is, but he can’t show them,” adds photographer and jury chair Yuriko Takagi. “After I watched it, I couldn’t stop thinking of it. You wonder how he feels—and by the end, you return to questioning how you feel. How do I feel?”
On the eve of his award ceremony in July, Quayson shared just that with CULTURED’s beauty editor.
Describe the feel of your work in three words.
Vulnerability. Acceptance. Discovery.
What draws your focus to the concept of multiple selves?
It’s something that I have struggled with, the different sides of me. The video shows one part of me: how I’m seen by people who know my orientation, [how] I like to go out and be around my friends. Dressing up. Just being open and expressive. And the other part is about my culture, my religion, and my family—how they see me.
Both sides are very different, but it is still one person. I’m getting ready for a party and putting on things and having fun with it. After the party, when I go back home, I have to take everything off, so that they won’t see. Otherwise, they would question why I dress like this. They would ask, “Are you this? Or are you this?” This struggle has gone on and on and on for so long.
Has your family seen your work?
No, I’ve told them about it, that my work was selected and that I won. They wanted to see it, and I want to show it to them, but I don’t know how to. I don’t know how they will react to it. They don’t know I’m queer.
What are your essential ingredients when shooting photography or a film?
I admire people. I love to look at people on the street, at school, or any place—see how they dress and how they behave. Where else do you turn for inspiration? Movies, TV, definitely music. Charli XCX really inspires me. For photographers: Peter Lindbergh, Tyler Mitchell, Ryan McGinley, Petra Collins.
Petra’s really the one, along with Peter Lindbergh, who made me want to start doing photography. Her work is so vulnerable and so soft and beautiful. Whenever I see her work, I go, How does she do this? I check on YouTube to see behind the scenes but still can’t figure it out. With makeup, I’m inspired by the people around me: drag queens, ballroom artists, photographers. On social media, [it’s] the people doing extraordinary things with makeup, and Euphoria. It was so simple, but so beautiful.
in your life?
