lucien v. sebastian

The following are detail images and installation photos from the 2023 Honors Thesis exhibition MEA CULPA! in John Sommers Gallery.

Link to the MEA CULPA! Honors Thesis Essay. The following text elements on this site are excerpts from said essay. 

I am exploring the convergence of my emotions and experiences centered around my relationship with my body, and how other’s perceptions impact my existence. This results in an ever-changing ebb and flow which responds to the environment it is in, just as I must. I use my camera to capture these moments of synchronicity, solidifying the fleeting second where I find resolution and peace, going on to then communicate this beautiful moment of catharsis through my installation in conversation with the exhibition space.

I cannot recognize myself in the forms of humans around me, they are too different from me, they do not represent me. I am told I am unnatural, but knowing better, I turn to the natural world to find myself. Though not of human form, I am seen in the stubborn will to live of weeds in the winter, I can be found in the curving lines of ice frozen over the Rio Grande, my body is mirrored by the cracking bark upon an old tree, and I bloom like the orange blossoms of spring as they tilt towards the sun. I am present in the growing, dying, and regrowing natural world, vibrant and flourishing - ever cyclical. Every week, I perform the sacred act of hormone replacement therapy, a needle in my skin to supply me with life-saving care. It is a symbiosis where my body and I come to understand each other, to understand what one needs from the other in order to thrive. This is much like the bee and the flower, one supplying the other with necessary aid in order for each to live.

Such intervention is necessary in the act of transition. I could not become who I need to be if I did not engage in the act of destruction so that I may take part in the glory of resurrection. A deconstruction of self allows for a reconstruction of the true, free of societal molding and shameful compliance, it allows for the restructuring of the architecture of my body and being in order to craft a stronger foundation and a more formative building. My body is my home, the vessel assigned to carry me, and I will decorate it as I must so that we can coexist in harmony. The cisgender, heterosexual (cishet) male body presents itself as sacred, as the goal of masculinity, as the end point of transition. Treated with reverence, its form exists like a framed photograph - immovable, constrained, placed within arms reach but presented in such a way that denies the possibility for touch. An impossible standard, and yet the only option if I wish to be respected and seen as a man. 

Photography can uphold this restrictive standard, as its history exists as one confined by the strict ideals of the proper way to present and the proper way to exist. A photograph must be mounted and framed, without scratch or dust or fingerprint, upon and within a structure that shall preserve it for centuries, to allow it to live in an archive to then collect the dust once so damaging and be forgotten. A silent, unremarkable standard that is upheld as the only way to give value to the artwork, to the moment captured.

I reject this standard. I reject the idea that the pristine untouchable is the only condition that bears worth. The queer lies within the tangible, the real, in one’s own reflection. I take this ideal that exists within the cishet and within the photograph and I reject them both, putting myself and my experience into the narrative. I do not frame my work. Instead I find ways to allude to a breaking free of the frame. Prints are layered only to then be ripped, ink is removed only to then soak into the wall behind the paper and expand, leaving a mark of color and vivaciousness. The ink has exited the space of the photograph, of the item to be consumed, and has now breached the border and entered into the territory of the viewer. The torn print reaches outward. The ink confronts.

I am questioning the idea that there is one correct way to exist, just as I question the idea that there is one correct way to exhibit. In my practice, as I seek to work through my experience, I challenge ways both human and photographic bodies are told they must exist. Methods of understanding are pushed, interrogated - is it uncomfortable to watch a print peel from the wall? Are you uneasy as the paper spills onto the ground, forcing you to your knees to truly digest its content? Why? 

Concepts of control are taken into investigation. There is a lust to control queerness by the cishet, to dictate what is and is not acceptable queerness - what is and is not perverse. There is a need to control one’s body by the transgender, to initiate hormone replacement therapy and to undergo surgery, to meticulously check every inch of fabric upon the body, to pull and pinch at skin to hope it maintains the form of the sex considered to be holy. I both savor and relinquish control within my practice. I am shoving my hands into the artwork to control, but also in futility. Utilizing photography allows me to pay close attention to each and every detail of what I capture within my lens, taking from what is rooted in the real world. Scrupulous action is taken as the image is manipulated in the digital realm, to then be printed over and over until it is “perfect”.

My control is relinquished when I install. All attempts at conformity and constraint become futile, as I begin to tear the print. I cannot dictate exactly where every rip will take me, often being pulled off course, moved in a direction I did not intend or separating fibers of paper in a way that was not desired. I do not reject this, however, and print another. Instead, I embrace this accident, which in turn breathes life and distinctive presence into the work. The print is mounted flat to the wall - which will tear from the paint when removed or shall bear holes from nails which held it taught. Or, the print is draped over the ground, touching the floor where the human foot has tracked dirt and grime. The artwork is not sacred in a way which makes it untouchable, but rather, it is sacred in the way that it embraces chance and exemplifies beauty and challenge all in one. The juxtaposition of the controlled photograph and the uncontrolled installation is representative of the experience of transition, embracing the highs and lows of crafted sex and refined gender.