AN ASCENSION
In March 2020 my same-sex partner and I got engaged; having
been in a relationship for five years, we both agreed to the
commitment of life-long unity. ‘An Ascension’ is a body of work
that explores queerness, love, hope and devotion, developed
during this period of engagement.
As a child I received a Catholic education, one that outwardly
taught the sins of deviation from the heterosexual path.
About the time I began to move away from faith, I experienced
my first recognisably homosexual feelings; from here on,
my relationship to my sexuality developed; however,
the influence of Catholic guilt lingered. Despite being openly
gay with close friends and family by the age of 18, I couldn’t
escape the vision of myself one day marrying, and starting
a family with a woman. While my relationship to my own
sexuality has evolved since then, I still feel the lingering
shadow of the Catholic view on sexuality over my shoulder.
In ‘An Ascension’ I study these shadows, filling them with the
light of hope that is my devotion to my partner.
‘An Ascension’ combines metaphor with diaristic images
of the spaces we build together and the bodies we unite.
The work represents themes of queerness and devotion through
abstraction and symbolism, all the while acknowledging
the shadows of the past.
My present day self looks back to my eleven year old self,
who returns a hopeful gaze; simultaneously, I look ahead
to the promise of marital bliss and the potential of queer unity.