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Dark Queens Summer 2003 As winter turned into
spring, I continued painting my newly-made friends, but I used a deeply personal experience as my guide. A Halloween
drag party had turned from fun to disturbing. As the night wore on, I began to question the meaning of sexuality.
Does wearing a dress make one more female? Does being gay and dressing like a woman make one more homosexual? I
staged a series of photographs of friends dressed in different amounts of traditional male and female clothing, posed them
in suggestive positions, and asked them to exaggerate their facial expressions. My intent was to create a contrast between
masculine and feminine while also exploring the curious nature of human emotion. If nothing else, this experiment was
cathartic. The exploration of sexuality and its meaning did not provide me any sort of answer as to what defines gender,
desire, love, etc., but it helped me to realize the questions that I started this series are irrelevant. After all,
it’s only a costume.
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