Journal of Student Research 2018

Untitled (Aberrant) Untitled (Aberrant)

119

Justin Nelson Senior, BFA in Studio Art: Concentration in Drawing

This artwork is blunt and indulgent and focuses on the narrative of being a queer, kinky, Midwestern individual. As a child, my gay curiosity was chastised by members of my family and my rural community. Drawing was one of the first ways that I explored my sexuality and rejected the sentiment that sexuality is shameful. It was through these handmade, crude, sexual images, that I satiated my curiosity and accepted my sexuality. I developed my obsession with drawing. Drawing was my “pornography.” Drawing became fetish. My drawings exist within an immersive context of sculpture and installation. These sculptures are banal and take inspiration from traditional Midwestern décor and furniture. I use familiar materials such as wood, wood stain, and interior paint in my sculptures. The drawings contrast these sculptures by being fantastical, provocative, and hyperrealistic. The drawings portray figures, still-lifes, and occasionally in the form of collage. They consist of contemporary and historical queer symbolism and explore concepts like cruising, party drugs, and my own personal fetishes. Peering in a small hole, crouching to the ground, stepping on a stool: these are all examples of how I intend the audience’s engagement to mimic my curiosity as a young gay boy. I want my audience to be aware of how they feel looking at provocative drawings, and how that sensation varies when they are alone versus when they are experiencing it in a crowd of onlookers. I create this art for two reasons. One, I want mainstream society to have more empathy for people who have been deemed sexually aberrant. Traditional society has a derogatory outlook on the sexually deviant often on hypocritical standards. Specifically, in the Midwest, conversations of sexuality are indirect and passive. Second, I am addressing the shame and guilt of my upbringing, not through modesty and censorship, but through acceptance and celebration. I wish to reclaim and empower my own type of “perversion.”