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The act of being him

I use photographic self-portraits to show that masculinity appears not as an essence, but as a series of acts, contradictions, and performative tensions. Here, masculinity strips itself of its mandate and transforms. Through these images, I ask myself what it means to “be a man,” but also what happens when that concept is broken, disguised, hidden, or shown in another way. I use religious symbols, animals, pop icons, and theatrical gestures to talk about identity and gender from an uncomfortable, poetic, and sometimes violent place.

There is humor, pain, tenderness, and resistance. There is the exposed body, the armed body, the sacred body, the body in doubt. There is no resolution, only a series of open questions about what it means to inhabit a gender when that gender ceases to be a refuge and becomes a battlefield. How much of what we call “being a man” is acting?