Artist Statement
1.
S&M (Saints & Martyrs) is a series of photographs of painting/sculptures that exist only for the lens (they are destroyed after shot). The work is genre fluid, queer in content and form (‘purity is a myth,’ proclaimed Hélio Oiticica).
2.
Photography is a drawer of dead-loved leftovers. But we throw away the keys. that is the deal. Here photography is an arena. The presentness of sculpture added to the past tense of photography creates a suspended time.
3.
Those are languid men. They are odalisques and nymphs and goddesses, ready for the taking. They are saints who give their body and life to the beloved, big brother and father. Those men are in control in erotic abandon. Here is my body, it is yours, take it, do with it what you will - please (me).
4.
All Art History survey books are books of photographs. Photographs engaged as transparent windows and also as placeholders for the ‘real experience.’ Like porn to sex. Photos that are anonymous artworks, invisible in their profusion, blamed for the degradation of the aura of the originals. And yet, it is often through them that we fall in love with works of art in painting and sculpture. We fell in love with photographs pretending to be paintings.
5.
Informed by Brazilian bodies of trance. Saints from Candomblé who mount, penetrate the body, who possess the lover. Saints in Christian churches, which readily give their bodies to the unseen male just outside the frame (Him), with lustmord. Becoming for love.
