and the band played on, and on on

2018-2021

and the band played on, and on on takes it’s name from the 1987 book, and 1993 film which expounds on the early history of the HIV/AIDs pandemic (including the now debunked patient zero theory). I grew up in the 90’s in New York under the public terror of the HIV/AIDs pandemic with latent queer desires, much of which were further contained by the timbre of these conversations. During the COVID-19 pandemic many communities, particularly communities of color and LGBTQIA2S+ folks felt radically different about what seemed at times like a unified and urgent collective response—an experience that resonated as very foreign for those whose community histories in what is still a pandemic, were largely ignored.

While I had been exploring some of these ideas materially and conceptually prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature of how the work developed into what would eventually be a solo exhibition and body of work took different shape as a result of these shifting dynamics. The somewhat somber nature of the work, and approach towards abstraction, departs from some of the more bombastic approaches in my other work.  

Materials in this body of work are specific and draw directly from histories that are reflective of the period in which these ideas are formulated. Underwear elastic present in the work is “Calvin Klein” underwear, which is indicative of a moment in my youth where billboard campaigns featuring figures like Marky Mark gaybait a community that under the shadow of HIV/AIDs and the culture wars were rendered unfit for public consumption.

As such It is not lost on me that at the same time ACT UP was protesting on the in NY, Marky Mark was sexing up Kate Moss, and advertising the goods to an audience for whom acting upon their own desire was perceived as dangerous and irresponsible.

The objects in the body of work are drawn upon with gouache and thick layers of graphite—fleshy, ghostly, and charred—occupying a tenuous space between the erotic, a quiet violence, and an elegy. Drawings build upon this language of the elegy and erotic suggestion with marks that radiate into energetic fields, and others that imply bodies, or memoria.