to build a home

Full description

Background: Queer families do not have the laid groundwork of heterosexual ones, and such complexities require resourcefulness. Influenced by Sara Ahmed’s theories of ‘queer phenomenology’ and ‘sticky emotions’ as well as Donna Haraway’s ideas of ‘staying in the trouble’, ‘to build a home’ is a proposition for a new way of thinking about family, identity, the body and desire. Like a nest, the home asks to weave together what materials you have to find comfort and stability; the home reflects environmental conditions, familial tensions, and seasonal forces. Aligning with prominent queer theorists José Esteban Muñoz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Jack Haberstam, the artwork explores ideas of failure, queerness, and nature and how alternative and expanded forms of photography can unsettle existing heteronormative forms of representation.

Contribution: ‘to build a home’ is a large-scale collage installed onto the façade of a public building. The artwork was formed through analogue and digital interventions that blend and splice together personal iPhone photos, failed photographic prints, experiments in the darkroom, clippings from old textbooks and test strips from previous projects. Photographs were manipulated through photocopier magnification, reassembled manually and reimagined through the cyanotype printing and toning process. By disrupting traditional processes from photocopying to Photoshop and abstracting bodies by layering intuitive processes from cutting, to toning with household products, this single large-scale collage collapses together found materials with candid moments of hurt, love and connection whereby ideas of the ‘home’ and ‘family’ can no longer be viewed as neutral or natural, but constructions of desire and social values.

Significance: The public art project was commissioned by the Mornington Peninsula Shire in conjunction with Victoria’s Midsumma Festival. The Artwork was on display and promoted through the council and Midsumma Festival public programs. The project contributes to further LGBTQIA+ representation and visibility throughout the local community.