Refusal Rupture Repair

Refusal Rupture Repair examines the complexities of non-conforming bodies and Western society’s relationship to queerness. Using my body as a metaphor for queerness, I document, digitize, and deconstruct my figure to generate an ambiguous form that exists outside of the gendered spectrum. Growing up in rural Oklahoma as a pansexual, genderfluid person, I encountered a multitude of conflicting experiences. My home-life was queer affirming and I had the privilege of growing up in a safe space to consume queer media within theatre, music, and drag performances. The exterior community, however, was often hostile, violent, and homophobic. Because of this, my relationship to queerness became one of awareness and contradiction, with each public moment being acutely calculated for safety while my home-life being one of constant reassurance.

To comment on this dichotomy I utilize my figure and heavily abstract it to challenge the viewer’s perception of bodily conformity. My figure is referential to the body, but is also removed from the restrictions of normative representation. This abstraction of my form is generated through a multitude of methods. I use digital elements such as photoshop filters, LED lighting, and text-editing glitch in tandem with analog processes like Screenprinting and hand-cutting to create layered, fractured prints that both reference and disrupt the body. These interwoven components influence the imagery’s abstracted quality while also commentating on the queer body as glitch. In the way that a glitch undermines a computer’s binary code, and is often met with hostility, the refusal of societal binaries by queer individuals is similarly disruptive. Although our association with a glitch is often negative due to it’s disruptive nature and our high need for consistent functionality, I ask the viewer to question that association. A glitch is the first indicator of a system’s need to be rebuilt, as the glitch is not necessarily what breaks the system, but is evidence that a system lacks inclusivity and adaptability. The queer body metaphorically acts that reminder to our social system, wherein the defiance to conform challenges reliance to norms while also highlighting the potential for what a more expansive system could be.

While the contradictions of this experience presents many moments of questioning and uncertainty, it is ultimately the continual resistance to social norms that affords the rediscovery and reunification of the self. Refusal Rupture Repair speaks to both the challenges of restrictive bodily norms as well as the joy within cultivating and living one’s truth. As I have made, and continue to make, active choices to transform and express my queerness within a demanding society, I present a similar challenge to the viewer by placing them in a dense, difficult, overwhelming environment that provokes them to confront and reassess their position on queerness and binary expectations