TAKE ME WITH YOU (2020) is a return to the seduction of lowrider aesthetics and the poetics of (re)claimed bodies. The classic American car – still a symbol of social status, masculinity, and a bygone era – undergoes radical aesthetic and functional transformations by Latinx and other youth and families of color into mobile symbols of cultural identity and personal pride. Focusing on the hyper-aestheticized modifications of the car’s engine (which must still be fully functional, according to lowrider competition rules), Take me with you reveals the loving care given to the vehicle – inside and out – evoking an intimacy shared between the car body, its owner, and lowrider club members bound by camaraderie and a common love for the culture.
ALWAYS FAITHFUL (2013) is an homage to and conceptual portrait of a dear friend who succumbed to cancer in 2013. A former Marine, a published writer, and a gay man living with HIV, Deke embodied the contradictions of gender and sexual identity that define modern queer experience. In these kaleidoscopic photo abstractions, I wanted to evoke the pageantry of gay male identities, the military, and Baroque aesthetics in the organic and cloud-like forms found in Deke's collection of undergarments.