Born a Worm

Todd Stong, MFA 2022 Rome Campus, Printmaking

I use the languages of printmaking and drawing to create queer figurative narratives that explore violence, boredom, and desire as they muddy the waters of history, sexuality, race, and ecological collapse. Combining researched subjects and uninhibited fantasy with art historical forms and motifs, my work asks viewers to consider how we navigate the hierarchical and collectivist systems that are part and parcel to the production of the western canon.  

An array of male figures and skeletons populate my imagery. Some at work, some aroused, others in danger, still more making mischief, the figures exist in a polymorphic mesh of simultaneous interface and disconnect – with each other and their environments. The scenes represent my own ambiguous experiences as a gay man interacting with other men and the world at large, with all the accompanying risks, transgressions, and rewards. I, like many other gay men in my generation, found early representation almost exclusively in pornography and the dark stories of the AIDS epidemic. Disease, sex, and violence run rampant in this garden. But so does sweetness, which always announces itself in the queerest and most unexpected of ways.