The Canes

The Canes is a new series of handmade collages that extends my sketchbook practice and deepens my exploration of the sugarcane field as a site of play, self-expression, freedom, and love. Begun in spring 2025, the series builds on visual and thematic ideas first introduced in my Queering Cane sketchbook that I started in 2017 in anticipation of participation in the PRIZM exhibition, Universal Belonging, during Art Basel in Miami.

Each collage in The Canes is composed using hand-cut color paper, painted mylar, monoprints, and hand-drawn elements. Mounted on cream Canson paper on acrylic sheets and sized at 11.7 x 16.5 inches, the works continue my use of silhouettes in natural surrounds to underscore moments of intimacy, joy, and communion. Where sugarcane fields have historically symbolized labor, surveillance, and colonial extraction, here they are reimagined as spaces for softness and connection. The visual vocabulary is deliberately playful — a vibrant reclamation of the sugar field through a transfigurative queer lens.

This series is ongoing, and each new composition furthers an evolving conversation with my previous work.