Designer, Maker, Artist
Underthings (Strip Tease I)
Soy-milk binder, cotton jersey, cochineal dye, instant film, video performance
Created with the help of Andy Billingsley and Matt Ruby
Inspired as a companion to Voting Ensemble 2020, this piece challenges our personal claim on political power with its diametric: systemic banal reduction. Underthings (Strip Tease I) recalls intimate memories of youth only to then distance and impersonalize, fabricating an assumption of the reality. From discovering as a tot that the fuzzy white bugs clustered on the prickly pear pads of my hometown when crushed produced a brilliant, bloody magenta, to being told as a teen that I, a “Man who has Sex with Men” would never be allowed to donate my blood; The two become one for my explicit use in this fantasy, but in reality, I had no power to begin with.