03 Performance

Loved by You – 2026

Marilyn Monroe, queer desire and the search for love in the age of apps

Loved by You begins with Marilyn Monroe, one of Dino Desica’s earliest queer inspirations, and her public image as a figure shaped by desire, vulnerability and the need to be loved. Rather than impersonating Monroe, Dino uses her as a point of departure to examine what the search for love looks like in his own contemporary experience.

Structured around a live self-tape, the performance moves between personal material, improvisation and a cappella fragments of songs associated with Monroe. Dino speaks about encounters through Grindr, dating apps, social media and dark rooms, placing these contemporary spaces for intimacy and visibility alongside the romantic mythology represented by Monroe.

The self-tape becomes both audition and confession: another attempt to make himself visible and to construct an image that might be desired. The audience is drawn into this process, and their presence continually changes the rhythm of the performance, allowing humour, awkwardness and vulnerability to interrupt its prepared structure.

Through this collision of Hollywood fantasy and contemporary queer experience, Loved by You explores the difficulty of separating the desire for love from the desire for attention, recognition and validation.

Concept: Norman Mine
Performance: Dino Desica
Presented at: The Divine, London
Date: 28 June 2026
Duration: 35 min
Photography: Luka Xuan

Loved by You begins with Dino Desica’s fascination with Marilyn Monroe and with a line attributed to her: “I’m just a small girl in a big world looking for someone to love.”

For Dino, Monroe becomes more than an object of impersonation. Her carefully constructed image, vulnerability and desire to be loved provide a lens through which to examine his own experiences of queer intimacy and the contradictions of contemporary romantic life.

Moving between personal stories, audience encounters and a cappella fragments of songs associated with Monroe, Dino shifts between the romantic mythology of Hollywood and the realities of Grindr, darkrooms, dating apps and social media. Technologies that promise connection instead expose cycles of looking, choosing, rejection and starting again.

The performance deliberately avoids becoming a polished impersonation of Monroe. Instead, Dino borrows fragments of her image and mythology to expose his own. Seduction gives way to awkwardness, humour to confession, and performance to moments of genuine vulnerability.

At its centre is a simple but unresolved desire: in a world where we have more ways than ever to find one another, why can being loved still feel so difficult?

Performance: Dino Desica
Presented at: The Divine, London
Photography: Luka Xuan