From the Artist
My experience of queerness is miraculous, varied, connecting, and complicated. With recent bodies of work I am focusing on some of the tensions that arise as a consequence of living in an intersectional body: tensions between showing and hiding, material and representation, seeing and not seeing, feeling and perceiving, and indeed between vitality and death. These tensions for me are about survival, as we must both be legible to find each other, but also must be covert and sometimes hide to maintain safety. Survival is the key magnetic force that brings queer communities together. I wish to celebrate this and also memorialize the attempts at survival which have left many of our comrades as ancestors.
The reason I first combined textile with a Polaroid was for a very practical reason: the model wished to remain anonymous (Adam Polaroid, 2022). The naked, sexually aroused image of a queer body posed certain consequences to the model. Not wanting to hide the utter beauty of a queer person or the intimacy of this image, I partially covered the Polaroid with the textile copy. I began to realize that this combination satisfied many of my objectives: showing and hiding at the same time, proposing an alternative visual language for queer survival, and creating the illusion of transparency. I make embroideries by scanning the source material and producing an embroidery pattern with the aid of a software specifically designed to see colors and assemble them on a grid. After verifying and sometimes correcting colors, I hand-embroider the pattern, it transforms me into a sort of human printer. Though this work will undoubtedly convey the analogue and the hand made, I fundamentally see these works as digital or at least in cooperation with the digital. This body of work takes a lot of time to produce; what you are seeing here is the result of two years of constant work.
Situating this body of work in the Strut community feels like the exact place it’s meant to be. No matter where the work goes in the future, I can always proclaim that my first solo show took place in a real location where real queer people live, work, and seek survival together. I’m grateful for this opportunity to share “Instant Gratification.” 20% of sales through this exhibition will be reserved as a donation to Strut. This project was supported by The Tom of Finland Foundation, the Oregon Arts Commission and the Hallie Ford Foundation.
The reason I first combined textile with a Polaroid was for a very practical reason: the model wished to remain anonymous (Adam Polaroid, 2022). The naked, sexually aroused image of a queer body posed certain consequences to the model. Not wanting to hide the utter beauty of a queer person or the intimacy of this image, I partially covered the Polaroid with the textile copy. I began to realize that this combination satisfied many of my objectives: showing and hiding at the same time, proposing an alternative visual language for queer survival, and creating the illusion of transparency. I make embroideries by scanning the source material and producing an embroidery pattern with the aid of a software specifically designed to see colors and assemble them on a grid. After verifying and sometimes correcting colors, I hand-embroider the pattern, it transforms me into a sort of human printer. Though this work will undoubtedly convey the analogue and the hand made, I fundamentally see these works as digital or at least in cooperation with the digital. This body of work takes a lot of time to produce; what you are seeing here is the result of two years of constant work.
Situating this body of work in the Strut community feels like the exact place it’s meant to be. No matter where the work goes in the future, I can always proclaim that my first solo show took place in a real location where real queer people live, work, and seek survival together. I’m grateful for this opportunity to share “Instant Gratification.” 20% of sales through this exhibition will be reserved as a donation to Strut. This project was supported by The Tom of Finland Foundation, the Oregon Arts Commission and the Hallie Ford Foundation.