One Day This Kid…

This piece is a blown-up portrait of a boy surrounded by text, all in black and white. The boy is the artist, David, while the text that surrounds him discusses the queer experience from a youth to an adult, as well as how society at the time would oppress it. Done in newspaper style, this piece can serve as a great comment on how industrialization has driven the division that led to homophobia and biases against the queer community.

Thinking back on industrialization, the extremely poor working conditions and minimal wages that came out of manufacturing brought about various methods of work reform, getting people thinking about reform as a concept in general. With a post-civil-war nation divided, newspapers pump out political article after article on the state of the union, all through a heteronormative and cisgender lens; access for most, justice for some. Here, David is offering you access to a "newspaper spread" of life and events through a queer lens, emphasizing the constant discrimination, danger, and abuse yet to come for him as he matures. A shocking phrase: “This kid will be faced with electro-shock, drugs, and conditioning therapies in laboratories…” is one of many that surround this boy, with all the warnings from the future being uncomfortably close and could be perceived as coming closer to his edges.  The text starts describing an innate hunger/desire this boy will have to live as his queer self one day, only to be met with death threats from men of power if he acts upon it. This is the queer experience post-industrialization and into the late 20th and 21st century.  Here, David is performing his own reform, calling designers and artists to take notice of the homophobia and queer discrimination that resides in the roots of our society.