Desire, Drawn: Greif Lazic in the Debut Issue of SNIFF Magazine

Mark Dunn
2025-12-16T06:34:00-08:00

From raw erotic pencil work to socks as sculpture, Michele and Aleks go deep into kink

When the debut issue of SNIFF Magazine was being assembled, a new publication dedicated to queer fetish and kink culture and its intersection with art and creativity, there was really only one Berlin duo the editors needed to call. Greif Lazic, the queer artist couple made up of Michele Santomarco and Aleksandar Mijatovic, have been making some of the most unapologetically sexual and rigorously crafted queer art to come out of the German capital in recent years. Their inclusion in SNIFF's very first issue feels less like a booking and more like a foregone conclusion.

Named after their mothers' maiden names, Greif and Lazic, Michele and Aleks have been a couple since 2016 and an artist duo since 2019. Working from their studio in the heart of Berlin, they make art rooted in queer intimacy, desire, and the body. Their practice draws from queer history and culture, from their own relationship, and from a shared refusal to flinch. For SNIFF Scent 1, they contributed work from two distinct but deeply connected series: Gay's Anatomy and SOXTING.

"Queer desire has always had to fight for the right to be seen. The duo doesn't make apologies for what they draw. The body is political. Arousal is political. They just make it visible."

The work in SNIFF Scent 1

Series 1: Gay's Anatomy

Black and white erotic pencil drawings on paper, each depicting nude men wearing nothing but sneakers and socks. The figures are uninhibited, well-endowed, often aroused, rendered with a precision and frankness that refuses to look away. The drawings are simultaneously disciplined in their draughtsmanship and charged with desire. Each piece is a unique original, hand-signed with a certificate of authenticity.

Series 2: SOXTING

Framed sculptural works made from real athletic socks, arranged to spell out words central to fetish subculture: feet, socks, kink. The pieces walk a deliberate line between the everyday and the erotic, transforming a mundane garment into a statement about subcultural desire and the objects that carry it. Irreverent but precise, SOXTING brings Greif Lazic's signature mix of wit and conviction into three dimensions.

Why this work belongs in print

There is a long history of queer erotic art being pushed to the margins, self-published, zine-distributed, kept out of galleries and off mainstream platforms. Publications like SNIFF exist to push back against that erasure, creating dedicated space for work that is explicit, intentional, and aesthetically serious. Greif Lazic's contributions to Issue 1 sit squarely within that tradition.

The Gay's Anatomy drawings are not provocative for the sake of it. The black-and-white palette strips the images down to line and form, demanding the viewer engage with the body on its own terms. The sneakers and socks are not incidental details, they are the point. Fetish culture has always found eroticism in the specific, the everyday, the overlooked. Greif Lazic understand this instinctively.

With SOXTING, the duo turns the object of desire into the medium. Athletic socks, mass-produced, anonymous, worn, become letters, words, declarations. The pieces are funny and knowing, but they're also sincere. Kink. Feet. Socks. Spelled out in fabric and pinned to a frame, these words feel simultaneously absurd and honest.

Two series. Two registers. One consistent commitment to making queer sexuality visible, legible, and impossible to ignore.

SNIFF Issue 1 is just one chapter in a practice that continues to expand. Greif Lazic's work has been exhibited across Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Barcelona, and their pieces held in private collections worldwide. They were invited by KINK Magazine to curate the entire Cuaderno 24 artist booklet in its 43rd issue, a milestone that cemented their standing in the international queer art and publishing world. More recently, their Gay's Anatomy series has been made available as stretched canvas prints shipped worldwide, bringing the same frank intimacy of the originals to collectors who can't visit their Berlin studio.

Their work does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a wider moment in which queer artists are insisting on the right to make explicit, embodied, desire-forward work, and to have that work treated with the same seriousness as any other contemporary practice. Greif Lazic are at the centre of that conversation.

To stay up to date with their work visit greiflazic.com