2014 - 2023 Expletive Project

My Expletive project is an ongoing experiment in the aestheticization of derogatory labels. I employ vividness, repetition, and the form of text to disempower slurs used everyday by obscuring the word through the stacking of its letters on top of each other. What remains is an aesthetic and geometric arrangement of shapes. I have been called some, but not all the slurs included in the series. Some of the included slurs are commonly applied to communities of which I am not a part. Instead of focusing solely on the lived experience aspect of this concept, I seek to create dialogue about the use of slurs in our society. What are other ways we can deconstruct the power of these words?

Started as ink and pastel sketches on colorfully patterned pieces of paper, this project has evolved into an installation effort including large wall and floor vinyl pieces, simulated stained glass, and oversized wooden block sculptures as well as a limited edition zine.

In 2019 I was invited to create a site-specific installation related to my Expletive project at The InsideOut in Sacramento. This project was called Expletive Chapel: Lavender Heights and consisted of two phases. The first, foundational phase was to transform the smaller, side windows of the space into light boxes that appear to be reversed stained glass windows (with light emanating from inside to outside as opposed to the typical light mediation of stained glass windows from outside to inside) and to transform the interior installation space into a kind of chapel. The light boxes serving as reversed stained-glass feature textual deconstructions of the four most common derogatory slurs applied to individuals within (or assumed/appearing to be within) the queer community. The interior space was completely covered with black fabric with the exception of a rectangle in the center that served as a screen for the projection of a slow-moving, abstract animation of my self-portrait (deriving from my Invisible Self-Portrait project) moving across the threshold from completely negative space to completely positive space and back again along the color spectrum. There was also a sound component of recordings of my voice pronouncing elongated sounds of the individual letters of each derogatory slur depicted in the light box windows, but played simultaneously as a rhythmic, repeated, meditative sound.

The second phase revolved around research conducted at the Lavender Library, an LGBTQ+ nonprofit, public library in Sacramento, on the history of the local queer community as well as interviews of self-identified queer individuals whose lives intersected with the Sacramento LGBTQ+ community in some way. I then sourced objects symbolizing the lived experiences of my interviewees and people I learned about through my research at the Lavender Library. After sourcing these objects, I painted them lavender and inserted them in the chapel like space of the interior of the first phase of the installation. This project explored the lived experiences and resiliency of the Sacramento area's LGBTQ+ community in response to demographic and political shifts; through community engagement responding to the perpetuation of homophobia, transphobia, and derogatory slurs; and by exploring a sense of community cohesion taking into account the possibility of intersectionality coexisting with individuality.

The animation and sound elements from Expletive Chapel: Lavender Heights can be seen on Vimeo.

In 2023 in honor of my solo exhibition Omission Rituals (at Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, New York) I made 31 unique, hand-drawn Expletive IDs (or identification/business cards) as a giveaway gesture to those who experienced and/or supported the exhibition. 

© 2023 Aaron Wilder. All rights reserved.