slice of life is a series of paintings as cinema, turning scenes of my life into stills from a movie. The auto-ethnographic nature of documenting the local queer youth party subculture fills a gap in our cultural fabric. Mainstream coming-of-age movies -- even gay ones -- lack the nuance and specificity to capture the personalities, emotions, habits, and practices that queer youth engage in.
In illuminating and ennobling these moments in paint, I transform them from memory to art object, giving them a physical presence.
I combine archival practices with a raconteur's approach to create images that tell anecdotes full of laughter, nostalgia, absurdity, and yearning. I imbue slice of life with the same feeling you get from flipping through a scrapbook filled with old film photos -- grainy and blurry, but memories still perfectly preserved.
These paintings embody the transformation from a private moment to a public one. By documenting intimate, mundane points in time, I invite the viewer in to share the memory.
september 19, 7:02pm. digital. 16" x 9". 2020.
Published in Sine Theta Magazine, Issue #18 "MORNING 朝".