Ceph Poklemba
"Glitter-Glitz|Gore-Horror" is a series of paintings, and sculptures in response to queerness represented in horror media, specifically media influenced by the Hays Code. The Hays Code is the informal name of the Motion Picture Production Code. Two of the policies within the code directly targeted marginalized people: first, “Films could only present ‘correct’ standards of life,” and second, “Topics considered ‘perverse’ cannot be discussed or depicted.”
I record my personal reactions to these films, the queerness, the characters, and their stories, and how these extend into the “real” world (Dracula, The Silence of the Lambs, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc…). I take colors and themes within the movie, or that have importance to queer identity, and pull them into pieces, working paint into cloth or on large canvases, sewing, tearing, piercing them -- to convey and visibly record the emotions I go through working on these pieces leaving a mark, as they did. I am reclaiming the monstrous, queer visage painted into media and reality as my own. Rather than being a monster the coding focuses on simply villainizing an expressively queer character. This is what I am given by Hollywood as a queer person, where I am either the monster, the murderer, or the victim.