^{As an object, Freud’s couch has a greater affinity to a sculpture than a traditional piece of furniture. Its modest construction involved a muslin platform and an eclectic collection of pillows covered by a rug.  The design of this unconventional couch helped to disarm his patients, using their reclining posture as a means to help disinhibit them from the conventions of Viennese society.  Freudian psychoanalysis leaves a lot to be desired by feminists, queers, and others; this work is a vehicle that riffs on that lack.}

^{steel, carpet, casters
48”w x 24”h x 96”l
2020}

^{An archival image reproduced on tent-like canvas as a four-part photo mural references both the spectacle of World War II era militarized encampments and the queer gaze of Physique Pictorial as choreographed by Busby-Berkeley; its title does double duty in condensing contexts.  Leather buckles and straps allow for the possibility of these images to be rolled up like bedrolls and transported to the next encampment.  Quonset huts in the background of the images undercut what might otherwise be more easily read as an aesthetically pleasing formation of bodies in a grid, playing with balls, instead making clear the military imperatives behind the training exercise.  The verso of this installation’s source photograph, handwritten in German, identifies the men in the photo as Syrian soldiers.  Their country, a Vichy colony during World War II that was subsequently occupied by British and French forces, is still in crisis in the wake of colonial destabilization.  Fascist violence incites fascinating spectacle still.}

 

^{canvas, leather bedroll straps
4 panels, each 44” x 96”
2019}

^{This slight cork weight belt is unfit for any effort.}


 

^{cork, twine
3“w x 14”l x 4”d
2014}

^{Herakles as map is a CNC-milled reproduction of a fragment from the classic Farnese Herakles.  In the many copies of the original Greek sculpture, from the Roman era to our contemporary moment, Herakles - named after his mother Hera - rests, draping his arm languidly.   In this iteration, the form is scaled down to the size of the artist’s body.  Mounting the work on a wheeled modeling stand offers a sense of the form in transition.  Built from a series of cross sections, Herakles is rendered in a kind of slab pixilation, condensing antiquity and the digital era.  His terraced topography offers one route to deconstruct the terrain of heroic masculinity.}

^{plywood, steel
32”w x 28”d x 54”h
2020}

^{Prototype for a Dream Sequence is assembled from a desire to support the complex preparatory labor of constructing just futures under the lived conditions of historical and quotidian subjection.  It is a continuation of a practice engaged with queer absences in the archive.  The ongoing legacy of the AIDS crisis, and the generations of queer erasure that precede it have created the conditions for an untethered queer present. In this body of work, artifacts and fragments become tools to imagine histories/ herstories/ theirstories.}

^{installation view
2020}