I’ve cut out more than 10,000 butterflies over the course of a decade. I began this practice in response to the artist Damien Hirst’s art installation titled “In and Out of Love,” resulting in the death of 9,000 butterflies. I began as a protest, matching the killing of 9,000 lives with a corresponding number of male genitals and anuses, all in an effort to say, “What a dick.
What an asshole.” It seemed appropriate at the time. It seems appropriate even now. What began as a protest evolved into a practice of meditation.
This memory of the body’s muscle enacted in the gesture of cutting, moved from anger to mindfulness to mourning for all that was lost in that claiming of art. I surpassed that number of 9,000 butterflies. I stopped counting after 10,000, still this cutting and still this loss that won’t stop cutting.
I’ve adopted the practice of using these butterflies as material for the making of what I see as art. Sometimes I use them to amplify the consciousness of queer identity, as if to say, “It’s just the male body; it’s just two men having sex.” Other times I use them as confrontation in my understanding of whiteness, the white male body as a pervasive presence, whiteness as a conditioned desire, and whiteness as an infestation. Desire is complicated and fraught with shame.
Anger is deep and, thus far, endless. I’ve been asked on more than one occasion why I only cut from the images of white men. Resentment is a lifetime of endured experiences.
Each time the answer is a concoction of equal parts indignation, defense, agitation, and defiance. The truth is, no answer is complete. No answer is entirely true.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
