At The Table: Counter Archive & The Architecture of Control
At the Table is an ongoing portrait series that examines how queer life is shaped through discipline, normalization, and the institutional systems that classify and document human existence. Each large drawing treats the body as a site where language, policy, medicine, religion, and bureaucracy structure the terms of being and belonging. The work studies how people navigate these architectures of control, and how those systems determine who is visible, named, or granted a place in the room. By placing each sitter at a stark white table and letting their own words appear across the drawing’s surface, the portraits function as a counter-archive. They interrupt the official record and assert lived presence. Built slowly and collaboratively with each sitter, these works become detailed records of human agency within structures that attempt to define, contain, or erase.
Conceptual Framework for At the Table
1. Administrative Authority and the Seated Figure
The seated posture is drawn from historical portrait conventions in which the person with “the seat” held authority. At the Table repositions this structure. The sitter occupies a place typically tied to evaluation or judgment, but here they hold the position of witness, interrupting the visual hierarchy that once defined who was entitled to appear with authority.
2. Institutional Typography
The typographic system mirrors the fonts used in legal, medical, and bureaucratic documents. These styles signal regulation and standardization. Their presence on the portrait surface highlights how administrative systems have documented, classified, or restricted queer and trans people. The fonts act as institutional residue rather than decorative design.
3. White Clothing as Institutional Neutrality
White clothing removes cultural and economic markers, echoing the “neutral” or unmarked body in administrative imaging. In this context, white refers to the flattening effects of institutional processes, where individuality is stripped in favour of standardization. It signals structural erasure rather than purity or aesthetic minimalism.
4. Objects as Personal Evidence
The objects placed on the table serve as forms of personal evidence that fall outside institutional categories. Unlike historical portrait props used to communicate status, these items reflect memory, grounding, and lived experience. They function as components of testimony, countering the limited fields of information captured in formal records.
5. Hyperrealism as Counter-Documentation
Hyperrealism has historically been tied to authority—state portraiture, forensic illustration, and scientific observation. In this series, high-resolution drawing becomes a method of counter-documentation. It applies the visual precision of official imaging to individuals often misrepresented or excluded by those systems, creating records that operate outside institutional control.