In my work I seek to complicate the role of portraiture by engendering a focus on queer representation. To further establish the figures as canonized icons, I use of traditional portraiture and Americana imagery as an important strategy with which to navigate the tension of metronormativity and the journey to finding a queer utopia.

Through the act of recontextualizing celebrity photo shoots, I create digital collages that collide appropriated imagery of pop culture that are translated to oil paint on canvas. Drawing from the work of José Esteban Muñoz, Joseph Campbell, and Hito Steyerl, celebrity figures are represented as classical heroes with their own mythology collaged from past, present, and future. Rather than provide a clear utopian vision, my work questions the ideal of a hero and the ways in which heroes are fetishized, recycled, and celebrated, while presenting a narrative of a hopeful yet complicated relationship to a queer future.