Jupiter Rising x EAF26: Queer, curious and challenging

The air cools instantly under the shade of Jupiter Artland’s trees as we walk for twenty minutes along the road, fairy lights illuminating the path. Up the hill we see two large banners announcing JUPITER RISING 2026, 360°. We are instantly involved in the liveliness of Jupiter Artland’s landscape: the green surrounding fields and the firm, human artworks sprinkled throughout.

Jupiter Rising X EAF is Jupiter Artland’s annual one-night festival of performance, art and experimental music in the woodlands at the sculpture park on the outskirts of the city. This year, Sgàire Wood curated the festival, as well as opening her exhibition InPride, In Piety, In Vigilance in Jupiter’s Steadings Gallery, and since the early days of the festival, Wood has performed Sgàiraoke – a hybrid of performance art and karaoke. Sgàiraoke is just as it sounds; she stands on stage, a screen behind her playing the audience’s requested karaoke songs on YouTube. There's a comfortability and play here; the crowd want to sing with Sgàire and those that volunteer. Through a shared participation, Sgàiraoke does the queer and crucial work of joyfully unifying the audience. 

Desert Kingsnake at Jupiter Rising. Photo by Charlotte Cullen for EAF26

To begin the night, we witness Desert Kingsnake, Kirstin Halliday and Aniela Piasecka’s reptilian work exploring lesbian desire. As we fill the Ballroom Gallery, a shadowy body perches on a leather couch, dressed in a snakeskin bodysuit and sunglasses. There are three rules: “no filming, no touching, no propositioning”. In a deep red light, the snake moves sensually, slithering off the couch and onto the floor. The audience loosens as the performance continues, laughing as the creature reveals a pair of black, knee-high, heeled boots. Camply, the snake struts through the room, looking straight at their spectators before lightly caressing their collaborator waiting in the audience. The air is tense with an intimacy, that we are witnessing something personal. The snake promptly sheds their skin to reveal a second, sexier snakeskin bodysuit beneath and finished with a triumphant “hissssss”! This performance calls the audience into the work; we watch the artists perform and they glance back at us. We are successfully propositioned as we witness a cheeky lesbian desire unfold – both ours and theirs?

In the 17th century Dovecot, a number of archival films by the American queer photographer Del LaGrace Volcano screen across the evening, presenting different aspects of queer experience. I watch some of My Family A Work in Progress, a film of archival material from across Volcano’s life. I see their family play and speak about their queerness openly and with curiosity, and catch a glimpse of how family belongs to each other. Volcano’s archival screening is an important interruption to the live performances of the evening, a glance into our queer past, and a testament to Jupiter Rising’s varied and intermedia curation.

Elsewhere, Holly O’Brien performs in the gallery-converted Glasshouse. The space feels aquarium-esque, as we find a blow-up pool elevated on a pedestal in the room's centre. A mermaid’s tail rests languidly on the front side of the pool, and then a figure walks out behind a black curtain. A minty-green latex mermaid! With pointy breasts and lips somewhere between fish and filler, she splashes in the water and runs her long fingers over her body. The gestures are intentional and slimy: a kind of sexy ritual. The audience watches the siren in her pool, until one spectator dances over, blowing O’Brien a kiss. The mermaid splashes the dancer with water before she rejoins the crowd again; it feels like I am witnessing a language I can’t speak, feeling it unravel before me. I am just one in a mass of people watching O’Brien’s mermaid splash about. So fishy and naked; plasticky and uncomfortable too. Did someone trap the mermaid in her little pool? Is she enjoying herself? How would she tell us if she wasn’t? 

At the night’s culmination, the festival winds through the dirt paths of Jupiter Artland and onto the open-air Woodland stage. I arrive just in time for Glasgow-based DJ Plantainchipps' fabulous set. Each rhythm flows so effortlessly into the next for a sultry and uplifting end to the evening. The stage is illuminated with strobe lights, glimmering and shining onto the surrounding leaves. Whilst some moments of the evening feel like a kind of corporate retreat, Jupiter Rising's performances are questioning, probing and investigative, and the communal dancefloor is playful and enchanting.

It's a joyous event; Jupiter Rising’s landscape and performance doing the queer and curious act of challenging traditional boundaries of what contemporary art looks and feels like. Within Jupiter Artland’s open and green earth, the artists' works invite us to bear witness and playfully consider ourselves in community together.

---

JUPITER RISING X EAF26 took place at Jupiter Artland on 22 Aug
Edinburgh Art Festival 2026, 14-30 Aug