Lucca Süss is a trans artist living and working in Zurich. Süss' studied in Monster Chetwynd's class and graduated in 2023.
Transformation is at the core of their work—both on a material and symbolic level. Lucca collects materials from thrift stores, secondhand shops, and online platforms. Each object is deliberately chosen, dismantled, and transformed into something new through processes like melting, welding, sewing, breaking, or bending. It’s not about mere alienation, but a deliberate re-coding of the object’s original function and meaning. What was once utilitarian becomes a sculptural body that both reveals and subverts social attributions.
At the heart of the practice lies a queer approach to materiality—beyond categories like “useful,” “logical,” or “well-structured.” The objects Lucca works with carry cultural markers (such as shower pipes, sports equipment, or furniture) and often embody heteronormative systems. These systems are broken open by placing the materials in new contexts. The sculptures become hybrid beings, unstable bodies in a state of transition—they perform processes of transformation, identity negotiation, and unrest. This approach to material is closely linked to Lucca’s perspective as a trans person. The appropriation and transformation of things not originally meant for them, things designed to serve the functions and aesthetics of normative bodies, is an act of self-empowerment. In the dismantling and reconstruction of these objects, the experience of transition becomes tangible: a non-linear, open process in which body, identity, and materiality merge, shape each other, and transform. Every material carries its own story, but the goal is not to balance old and new meanings, rather to radically rewrite them. The objects lose their legibility—they become unstable, fluid, defiant. This is where their power lies. These processes are deeply connected to questions of identity and corporeality. Just as clothing can serve as armour in queer everyday life—an act of visibility and risk—Lucca’s sculptures become surfaces of transformation. They bear traces of past functions while carrying the potential for different futures. They are resistant and fragile, loud and vulnerable at once.
The “mutating body” is not merely a symbol, it is a structural principle in Lucca’s work. The sculptures remain in a state of perpetual becoming, pointing to the fluidity of gender and the impossibility of fixed categories. As Susan Stryker describes, transness is often constructed as monstrous, Lucca embraces this “monstrousness” not as threat but as a productive form of resistance. The works challenge what is considered “natural” or “stable” and open up spaces for new ways of thinking and perceiving. Ultimately, Lucca’s work is an invitation: to engage with alternative forms of being, to reflect on the construction of bodies, power relations, and meaning and to recognize transformation as a generative state.
