Am I queer?

2013 - 2014
Final Year Degree Project
Drawing, photography, installation, conceptual art, performance art

My final-year degree project resulted in some of the most personal work I have ever created. Throughout the year, I worked with a range of mediums as I explored, and challenged, the negative feelings I was having towards my own queerness; culminating in a body of work that documented a deeply personal journey of self-reflection towards self-acceptance.

The expectations of a queer man, LGBTQ+ categorisation, equality, sexuality and identity; these were all things I was grappling with in my early twenties, as many of us do. And as many artists do, I used art to express my confusion, my thoughts and my fears with a hope to better understand them.

As I was I exploring these themes, I became particularly interested in the most recognisable LGBTQ+ motif: the rainbow flag. The flag conjured, and continues to conjure, many questions in my mind: was the rainbow flag uplifting me, or was it suppressing me into a label-heavy subculture? Do I want to be part of the LGBTQ+ community? Am I queer?

I attempted to pose these questions through a series of drawing concepts, that went onto become performances and process art pieces using rainbow flags themselves and coloured threads from unpicked flags.