Caleb Cole

My work addresses the opportunities and difficulties of queer belonging, as well as aims to be a link in the creation of that tradition, no matter how fragile or ephemeral or impossible its connections. Recontextualizing and transforming secondhand objects (such as clothing, blankets, dolls, and found photographs) as well as popular media connects with a queer tradition of refashioning a world that was not made for us, refusing given meanings in favor of ones that more closely align with our lived experiences. The search for these items is a kind of cruising, that desire itself entwined with the resulting work, and taking objects home to tend to them is an expression of extended witnessing and devotion.

Using methods such as collage, assemblage, photography, and video, I bring images and objects together for chance encounters, deliberately placing materials from different time periods into conversation with one another, as a means of thinking about a lineage of queer culture while resisting a singular progressive genealogy. My work acknowledges the impossibility and undesirability of returning to the past, and instead experiences the act of looking backward as a way to imagine beyond the present to new queer futures. www.calebxcole.com