About Instant Gratification
This body of work materialized over the course of 2 years as the artist explored various aspects of their relationship to intimacy, queerness, solidarity, sexuality, and love. As a group these works act as a confessional diary of the many intersecting lives of queer people experiencing joy. There are also works in this group that complicate the realities of queer joy by exposing the forlornness of empty beds after the lovers have departed (Aftermath Polaroids), shadows, or the emptiness of denying queer joy (Polaroid [unknown]). Only rarely can the artist’s body be seen in these works.
“Instant Gratification” references the instantaneousness of making images with Polaroid film as well as the raw intimacy contained within its frame. The artist explores gratification not only of sexual release but also the meditative awareness of the image that materializes through the slow process of hand embroidery. Anyone familiar with hand embroidery will recognize that “instant” is an ironic description of the work, while Polaroid enthusiasts will understand exactly how accurate this description is. Therein lies a tension which proposes a reckoning with the meaning of time, the fleetingness of romances, an emphasis on the power of memory, and a queering of intimacy.
Polaroid film has a long history intersecting with queer lives. Before digital photography, it would have been dangerous to make images of queer people with their lovers, especially if those images expose any form of physical intimacy. Thus queer people have used this film format - small, discrete, resulting in only one copy - to privately and safely document their lives. It is within this queer legacy of survival that the artist has chosen to emphasize the notion of care by faithfully copying these images in textile and concealing the faces of the queer bodies within. While both showing and hiding themself and others, the artist proposes alternate futures for queer solidarity.
As a non-binary and multi-racial artist, Espinoza has formed a naturally diverse community which is reflected in this work. The viewer may assign gender or race, age, ability or other identity markers which may not exist at all or may only explain a partial truth about the subject. The instability of such categories as objective standards is well- known to people living in intersecting identities. Also, though every person throughout this work can clearly be labeled queer, the artist insists that queer be used in the broadest and most political sense, meaning sexual and gender minorities whose very existence and survival is a revolutionary act of dismantling patriarchal and colonial hegemonies.
“Instant Gratification” references the instantaneousness of making images with Polaroid film as well as the raw intimacy contained within its frame. The artist explores gratification not only of sexual release but also the meditative awareness of the image that materializes through the slow process of hand embroidery. Anyone familiar with hand embroidery will recognize that “instant” is an ironic description of the work, while Polaroid enthusiasts will understand exactly how accurate this description is. Therein lies a tension which proposes a reckoning with the meaning of time, the fleetingness of romances, an emphasis on the power of memory, and a queering of intimacy.
Polaroid film has a long history intersecting with queer lives. Before digital photography, it would have been dangerous to make images of queer people with their lovers, especially if those images expose any form of physical intimacy. Thus queer people have used this film format - small, discrete, resulting in only one copy - to privately and safely document their lives. It is within this queer legacy of survival that the artist has chosen to emphasize the notion of care by faithfully copying these images in textile and concealing the faces of the queer bodies within. While both showing and hiding themself and others, the artist proposes alternate futures for queer solidarity.
As a non-binary and multi-racial artist, Espinoza has formed a naturally diverse community which is reflected in this work. The viewer may assign gender or race, age, ability or other identity markers which may not exist at all or may only explain a partial truth about the subject. The instability of such categories as objective standards is well- known to people living in intersecting identities. Also, though every person throughout this work can clearly be labeled queer, the artist insists that queer be used in the broadest and most political sense, meaning sexual and gender minorities whose very existence and survival is a revolutionary act of dismantling patriarchal and colonial hegemonies.