Additional information
| Artist | Day Magee |
|---|---|
| Year | 2019 |
| Material | Performative Drawing |
| Dimensions | 275cm x 150cm |
The Inverts Convenant
By Day Magee – View Artist’s Profile
Two weeks before the COVID-19 lockdown, the artist exhibited symptoms of syphilis, leaving stigmata-like marks on their palms; a fever, and deep, painful fissures. They knowingly contracted the disease sexually through their anus months prior in a bout of loneliness and apathy. In creating this work, the artist performs to camera and primes the sandpaper using the ‘queer sick body’ to intermingle infected blood with the grain of the canvas.
Description
Central to the work is the artist’s internalised homophobia, sewn under an Evangelical upbringing that culminated in conversion therapy following same-sex sexual assault as a young teenager Notions of queerness as an inversion of the hetero-centric, “natural” order; of sin manifesting in physical and spiritual illness is then made manifest in a self-fulfilling prophecy: self-destruction played out as a queer sexual rite of passage. The resultant work is a Hellscape of the artist’s toxic associations with sex – queer abjections & biblical abominations depicted on the image’s abrasive surface.
