I used to belief in firm truths. I believed in good, bad, merit, value, meaning, progress — now all I see is change. Queerness is riding the momentum, leaning into the freedom offered by a world in which nothing is fixed. As I untangle my hard-line worldview, my mind is starting to see things afresh, and there’s a new sense of awe when I experience something beautiful and strange. With a laugh, I ask, “What am I doing here?” as a friend binds and suspends me from the ceiling. “What am I doing here?” as I stand bound to a friend by our mouths. “What am I doing here?” as I get tied to a cross and flogged. Not long ago, I was a wholesome Catholic school boy, and I have to laugh at the transformation. Instead of shaming myself, I’ve finally given someone else the flogger.

But shame doesn’t actually come from within — it’s built up around us by people with less imagination. Rather than grovel for salvation, queerness has given me the freedom to self-determine. My queer journey has centered around unearthing the ways shame permeates my life.

Taking religious icons and rituals, twisting them for pleasure, and enshrining them in my work are my process of claiming agency. When I document absurd moments of awe and frame them with respect, they command the reverence of a Pietà. Seemingly-brutal scenes of bondage and denial overflow with tender love and affection.

When you squint, kink and religion look similar. But the shame that I inherited from Catholicism was working against my identity, and the queer kink scene welcomed me as I am. It took a great deal of imagination to envision a future of any kind, but taking that step has sent me on a quest to know myself and my community. My artwork is the debris of this breakneck, frenetic change. Everything I make is a remnant of who I was at one moment and ceased to be the next.