TRIBUTE

Semen on Polaroid 600 Photograph

2016

Artist Process:

Strangers sourced from queer social media apps such as Grindr, Scruff etc.

Polaroid portrait of subject taken, then subject asked to ejaculate with their own DNA onto photograph while Polaroid of their own face develops. Semen was then set / dried / stained.

Artist Statement:

The contemporary online act of “tributing” is traditionally, and generally, a heterosexual defilement act in which an image (usually that of a female) is printed from the internet and ejacualted onto by the man. A photograph of the defiled image is then re-uploaded to the internet where a chain of acts occur, emulating a ‘digital bukkake’ of sorts. This act is largely seen as aggressive, perverse, intrusive, violative and occurs within a pack, (coward) mentality or group setting.

Variations of “Tributing” may occur.

“Tribute” 2016 is an ongoing series (currently still open to volunteer subjects) in which I aimed to re-interpret and re-contextualize this phenomenon. By sourcing queer, male volunteers who consented to both Polaroid photograph portrait and to “tribute” their own image by himself, I aim to scrutinize both queer and heteronormative male behaviours and open up a discussion of the nuances between traversing aggression and violence with sexuality and eroticism.

One can not ignore the connotations of the act of symbolically “cumming over one’s own face” and the relationship to our hyper-sexualized pornified (queer) culture.

Exhibited at Trocadero Art Space as part of COMMITTED; 2017 Trocadero Committee Member Exhibition as a performative living sculpture installation, polaroid on human male body. 

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