XOXO

by Grim Park

I've been told, “I don't understand why queer artists always use sexualized representations to create their work.” I'm not sure why. I use symbolism in my work to represent my identity, hoping that heteros would be more comfortable understanding my work and recognize my queer identity. But after hearing that, I felt a strange feeling, and I wanted to make a work as a resistance to the abnormal way they look at us, and I wanted to make a series that would make the heteros uncomfortable in a raw way, not metaphorically like my previous works. The title of XOXO is ‘X’ for kissing and Twitter, and ‘O’ for hugging and OnlyFans. On Twitter and OnlyFans, gay men show their bodies in a more primal way. I once heard someone say that forty in the queer community is as good as dead. It doesn't exist, and it's lost to youth. When I look at my own state of being on the verge of forty, I no longer struggle to meet people or to be attractive to others. I still have the desire to meet people, but I can't get rid of it through Twitter or OnlyFans. The work expresses this ironic state of affairs, and the greeting ‘XOXO’ used in the English-speaking world is a symbol of love or friendship, but it is also a work that captures the state of one's own affection for someone, which is lost in the moment through the primitive images of SNS. (Artist signed)