HOWL X SHYGIRL Collaboration

[Location] London, UK

[Medium] Campaign / Performance

[Role] Performer

[Brand] HOWL Worldwide

[Collaboration] HOWL x Shygirl

[Link] HOWL x SHYGIRL Skin

[About]

This one felt different from the start. Not a gallery, not a theatre — a campaign for a sexual wellness brand. And that's precisely why it mattered. HOWL Worldwide is a queer-founded, sex-positive brand that grew out of London's nightlife and rave culture. Named after Allen Ginsberg's banned poem, HOWL exists to dismantle the shame that surrounds pleasure — particularly for LGBTQ+ communities and gender minorities who have been historically denied the right to desire openly. Their collaboration with Shygirl — one of the UK's most vital voices in queer pop and club culture — for the launch of the HOWL x SHYGIRL SKIN brought together music, fashion, and sexual empowerment in a single gesture.

I was invited to perform in this campaign — and what I brought was the body I always bring: one that doesn't resolve neatly into a single category. The work sits at the intersection of queer visibility and sexual positivity, but not in a way that asks permission or explains itself. The movement language I performed isn't about seduction as performance for an external gaze. It's about the body claiming its own pleasure — without apology, without explanation, without performing for anyone else's comfort.

What resonates with me about this project is how it aligns with something I keep returning to in my practice: the refusal to separate the political from the sensual. For gender minorities and queer people, the act of being visibly at ease in your own body — desiring, being desired, choosing how and when — is already a radical position. HOWL understands this. The campaign doesn't sanitise queerness for mainstream consumption. It holds space for the messy, unapologetic reality of bodies that have always been told they want the wrong things.

Working commercially in this way isn't a departure from my artistic practice — it's an extension. The same body that performs dissociation in Ken Nakajima's theatre, that holds open the gap between the legible and the unarchived, here performs something equally urgent: the right to pleasure as a fundamental dimension of queer selfhood.

HOWL Worldwide was founded by Samuel Douek in 2019 as a queer-inclusive rave and evolved into a progressive sexual wellness company.

Featured in Dazed, Gay Times, Cosmopolitan, and TimeOut, the brand champions radical inclusivity across all genders and sexualities.

Its manifesto concludes: "HOWL is liberation through exploration." The HOWL x Shygirl collaboration represents a convergence of queer nightlife culture, sexual wellness, and contemporary performance — a space where Wang's interdisciplinary practice finds a direct, embodied application.