In my drawing series Pattern Porn, I build installations framing my femme (cis and trans) friends in their cultural artifacts, and then photograph these tableaux. Each subsequent drawing from these photos celebrates the model’s culture as signified by her fetishized objects. These drawings are informed by the masking of brides, who are veiled to highlight their role in a financial transaction. The concealed faces of semi-nude models in my work demand an examination of our exotification of the disembodied. These drawings play with the dual definitions of “fetish.”

I draw through carbon paper in order to flatten the tonality of the pencil, rendering patterns and textures alike, be they the depictions of textile, plants, or flesh. This technique gives the objects equal importance to the eye; the body exists almost as an absence within the installations. This effect is made possible by the process of drawing; manual photography wouldn’t capture it the way I’d intended. I am inspired by Seydou Keita’s sumptuous portraits, but did not want to produce a photograph. The visual sifting that the viewer performs with the drawings is more interesting to me.