I rented a furnished apartment for a few months from the artist Michael Chapman, a Hemingway type. It had a taxidermy of a big horned sheep and a boar mounted on the walls. There was a liquor cabinet that slid to reveal a secret room with stained glass and a big bed. The furniture was rugged, dark, and heavy.

At around the same time, I found a treasure trove of 1960s Playboy magazines at a thrift store nearby. I became fascinated by the objects that were advertised as necessary ingredients to being a “man’s man”—primarily whiskey, technology, cigarettes, and cars.

I am interested in exploring and disrupting social expectations and gender roles by co-opting these traditionally normative and heteronormative spaces and ideals and reimagining them with a queer cast.