Denys: Look At Me, Yes You

The talents featured in this new edition of Container Talks don’t go unnoticed, and every step they take forward is a stride toward inclusion for many. We have brought these exciting and emerging faces into the spotlight, ready to reshape conventional narratives with a wave of queer culture. Young, bold, and unapologetically themselves, check out the Container Love editorial with Denys.

Talent Denys by Cameron Nedrick, Photography Christian Ruess and Anil Ayhan, Art Direction Yasmin Momodu, Production Container Love 

What is love to you?

I very often wonder what love is to me. Every year it is a new discovery and understanding of what it is. Love can be very complicated and it is not only about the relationship with your partner. It’s also about yourself, the world, your environment. I love my relatives, I have loved myself, I have loved, fallen in love and sometimes suffered bitterly. But this is the meaning of love, so you get to know yourself, your true and real feelings, even if sometimes they may be unpleasant. We can talk about it forever, for everyone it is something different, a separate, deep world of feelings and sensations. The main thing is that love always gives hope that the world can be better.

Do you have a queer role model?

I don’t have any role models among queer people that I look up to. It’s more about some kind of mutual exchange. Everyone I’ve met in my life has told me about their life experiences, which is fascinating. But everyone has their own story, their own path. I want to be an example for myself first and foremost.

Tell us a secret about you!

I have a lot of secrets, probably most of them I prefer to keep to myself, that’s what secrets are for. But I’m willing to reveal one: I am a big fan of “H2O: Just Add Water”. I literally dreamed of being a mermaid when I was a kid.

Your message to the world?

Message to the world sounds a bit too loud, I don’t think I’ve ever directly thought about what to say. I just sincerely wish that the world would finally wake up. I wish people would stop fighting, stop destroying, hating, killing each other. The biggest threat to the world is us, humans. And we’re fucked up. It’s a complicated question really, for me the perception of the world has changed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. But I still believe in the best for this world.

When do you feel the most seen?

Honestly, I realized that I really like to be noticed. Even though I’m quite shy, and at school it was always a problem for me to be noticed. I couldn’t talk loudly or speak out, it’s hard. But I managed to attract people to me through creativity. That’s how I realized that sometimes words are not necessary. Through modeling I also felt seen, sometimes without words. Because when you’re on the catwalk you don’t need to talk at all. But thanks to music, which I started practicing not so long ago, I also started to be heard. Creativity is the total sum of everything that allows me to be seen and heard.

What is your form of expression?

That’s always an easy question for me to answer. It resonates with what I wrote earlier: it’s art, of course. It helps me to express myself to the fullest. But for me, another such interesting tool is my body language. Sometimes when I’m in a club it’s easier for me to meet someone because of that. I can get so immersed in myself and forget that there is someone else around that I just feel only my body, my energy, my desire, my passion. People can often come up to me and say, “my God, you move so beautifully, can I join you?” That’s how some of the introductions happened. Thanks to that I realized how beautiful, sexy and desirable my body is. When I am hurting mentally, I just put on some music, close my eyes and let it all out with my movements. They can be plastic, they can be weird, they can be beautiful, they can be silly. But that’s how I express myself.