Less than Nothing

Trace 3 It was only a while ago, that I realized I love them. We did an experiment; we stood on opposite sides of the one way mirror. they looked themselves, projected their desire on themselves, strived to adorn themselves. Perhaps, probably, I was envious of it. Hiding behind the mirror which I peeped through, I observed and documented them. As images piled up, it became clear that my gaze of censorship doesn’t stop meaningless scissoring, that I end up trying to cut out them. That was how we reveal, fight, bump against each other. This work is the by-products of such process. by-products accumulates, I look into them. It was only a while ago, that I realized I love them. Trace 2 He seemed gay. He was seated next to me at the classroom of graduate school. He was a hard person to simply place inside the box I had labeled ‘gay.’ It was not because of his foreign accent, his exotic looks or the symbolic accessories which I could not recognize. When he put on his makeup for a drag performance, he turned into someone who confused me even more. I tried to put them in the box that said ‘Drag Queen,’ but they did not have the thick lips or exaggerated cheekbones. They weren’t simply headed towards femininity. I have tried, and failed to define them. It was uncanny. There was a strong resistance against my perception. Not long after, I even taxidermied them on top of my images to attempt a definition. I decided to document all the reflections that were doomed to this failure. Trace 1 It’s been a quite long time since I saw him first time. Perhaps, I haven’t yet. Is it my chronic disease? that I project myself on him even when I look at him with my eyes. Every time my family moved in my childhood, I had to watch out for people in the new environment. Observation on others’ desire and censorship to melt myself into surroundings became the purpose of my seeing, my eyes eventually turned their gaze on