When the artist Alex Da Corte and the writer Charlie Fox talk about Edward Scissorhands, Frankenstein, Hercules, Michael Myers, A Clockwork Orange, Scar from The Lion King, they’re also talking about beauty and body anxiety and disability and sexual attraction and queerness—the anxieties of existing physically in the world every day. Da Corte, whose elaborate videos, sculptures, and installations critically re-stage pop culture, art history, and his own life, and Fox, whose recent book This Young Monster celebrates beautiful misfits and freaks across all walks of culture, go deep on how they live—in their minds and in their work—far from what they call normative behavior.

Visit Da Corte’s solo exhibition in New York at Karma through November 3 and his work at the Venice Biennale through November 24, in the main exhibition May You Live in Interesting Times. Buy Fox’s book This Young Monster here.