Fantabulosas 12 January 2026 (Moral Panic Room)

Collage, digital color print, 13 x 19 inches

Came of age under Reagan, when certainty passed for morality and obedience dressed like virtue. The language was clean, biblical, athletic, reassuring. It explained everything. It explained who was innocent, who was dangerous, who deserved care, and who could be left to disappear.

I was a gay boy learning how reality is edited by authority. What was happening was not happening. What was killing us was not killing us. Silence framed as responsibility. Fear framed as love. Gaslighting practiced at scale, rehearsed nightly on television, enforced by family, church, school, and state.

The AIDS crisis unfolded as a moral lesson rather than a public health emergency. Bodies were turned into arguments. Grief privatized. To survive required a particular discipline: watch yourself, doubt yourself, make your self small.

I began making art in that atmosphere—not as expression but as calibration. A way to test what was real against what I was told to feel. I remain suspicious of cultures that sanctify trauma while refusing responsibility, that convert injury into identity and confusion into authority. I have seen how easily suffering becomes a performance, how quickly moral certainty grows from fear.

I do not confuse victimhood with truth. I learned too early how power speaks in the language of care.