Queer Material
I reference the body through direct intervention and non-direct implications in an attempt to make visible the structures that code and direct everyday actions. Through the use of photographs, sculptures, and body adornment, I dissect the meaning of materials and objects to reconstruct them within a queer narrative. Everyday material debris from old skillets, to urinal cakes are used to penetrate normative structures around identity, gender, and sexuality. I explore the contradictions, confirmations, faults, facts, and perceptions, that cloud my own ideas and judgements. All of which I recognize as structural and historic in my own Sisyphean attempts at self-awareness.
The skillets encrusted with layered seasoning speak to the historical, societal, and cultural constitutions that define our identity. An identity that is performed, reinforced, and replicated through images and objects. I attempt to insert myself into the image of the idealized male beefcake, by exploring insecurities around my body, and identity. Referencing images from early male physique magazines I photograph myself continually attempting to embody an ideal that always seems to be just out of reach. The absurdity of the action projected into the world struggling to be fully realized, always performed, never truly ‘authentic’.
Urinal Cakes
Skillets
