As I move forward with my portrait practice, I am increasingly working through research and development as a core part of my art making. This includes naming the overarching conceptual framework through which my current series At the Table, my forthcoming project Section 149, and related future works are understood. I describe this framework as counter-legibility.

 

Counter-legibility names what happens when queer people are asked to make themselves easy to read within systems that were never built for them. Legibility often presents itself as neutral, but in practice it functions as a cultural and bureaucratic demand shaped by legal, medical, religious, and administrative structures. These systems reward simplicity, punish complexity, and require certain identities to appear in tidy, compliant forms so they can be classified, managed, or made comfortable to others.

 

Counter-legibility refuses that demand. It shifts attention away from the queer body being interpreted and toward the systems doing the interpreting. It exposes the norms and expectations that narrow how a person is permitted to appear, revealing how recognition is structured long before anyone enters the room.

 

In my practice, counter-legibility marks the moment when presence refuses to shrink for the sake of comprehension. Complexity is allowed to remain intact. The portrait becomes a site where visibility and power collide, and where the viewer encounters not a streamlined version of a life, but the full scale of what systems attempt to contain.

 

Counter-legibility functions as the conceptual spine of my work. It guides how each portrait examines the cultural demand to be understandable and identifies the point at which that demand breaks down.