i JUST WANT THEM TO KNOW
THAT THEY DIDN’T BREAK ME

I was ten years old when MTV hit the airwaves. My sensibilities were shaped by the sugar-high of pop culture in the neon-hued 1980s: music videos, Saturday morning cartoons, late-night creature features, pop art, Swatch watches, and Atari video games, and also the crushing lows of growing up gay in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It truly was the best of times and the worst of times. 

With I Just Want Them to Know That They Didn't Break Me, I combine photographic portraits of fellow queer men who lived through the 1980s, audio recordings of their stories of struggle and survival, archival photographs, vintage objects, and ephemera in an installation that explores my complicated feelings about that era. By looking to the past – a time of political instability and government indifference in the face of a terrifying disease – I hope to find clues on how to navigate the world of today. Ultimately, I strive to create work about the search for joy amidst the existential uncertainty of being gay in the 21st century.