Portrait of Kunst: (2020)

Portrait of Kunst: (2020)

This is the original Suffocate the Bourgeois portrait I painted in 2020. It’s large—about six feet tall—and it marked a turning point in my practice. I was in Miami during the Trump presidency, a period when the rights and safety of non‑gender‑conforming performers were under renewed threat. Trump’s rhetoric emboldened hostility and rolled back protections; many performers who had felt relatively safe and complacent during the Obama years were suddenly vulnerable again. That heightened sense of danger and urgency, paired with a raw desire to speak up, fed directly into this work.

The title comes from a DIY headpiece Kunst once taped to their head. In my version, the slogan is scrawled across the torso in red paint and deliberately misspelled (“Bourgois”) to emphasise the raw, improvised quality.. Beneath the words, the figure feels both assembled and fragmented: rough black outlines carve out limbs and feet, while large areas are left undefined. This tension reflects the way we project ourselves online—offering up fragments for others to consume, and the way society was exploiting personal data and identity.

The ground is mostly a pale grey, almost chalky surface that lets the figure stand out. The legs are outlined in black and filled with muted cream and hints of chartreuse, while the torso is a soft lavender hue. A bright yellow triangle—like a hat or a spotlight—crowns the figure, drawing the eye upward. Splashes of acid green and hints of teal along the edges introduce more notes of energy. The red lettering bleeds and drips, reinforcing the urgency of the message. All these colours work together to flood the viewer when you first look at the canvas, mirroring how social media overwhelms us with information.

Painting Suffocate the Bourgeois forced me to open up about my own views on exploitation, information harvesting. It was made at a time when I was questioning what it meant to “harvest” someone’s online persona for art. The political climate amplified that question: I saw powerful people weaponising identity and data, while performers and artists fought back with their voices and bodies. This piece captures both the threat and the defiant energy of that moment. It’s one of my favourites, and it still stands as a pivotal moment in my journey. With my new show on the horizon, this piece will help narrate how my work has evolved from capturing a single performer to addressing broader social questions.