Cultured Magazine

Matthew Morrocco I often think about the writer Maggie Nelson describing a Q&A she held during a book tour, in which an audience member asked the then- pregnant Nelson if her "condition" inhibited her writing practice. In a comic internal dialogue, Nelson laments: "Leave it to the old patrician white guy to call the lady speaker back to her body." Here she is responding of course, to the implied oxymoron—"the woman who thinks." Matthew Morrocco's forthcoming project, Orchid: Seasons, seeks to reckon with another implied oxymoron—"the queer who thinks." Morrocco takes umbrage with the body-over- mind paradigm as the default mode of expression in feminist and queer art. "The emphasis on how marginalized people use, care for and struggle with our bodies is another way we are trapped in a system that keeps us down," says Morrocco. Orchid: Seasons is year-long investigation spanning photography, installation and video, unfolding over quarterly 10-day exhibitions. Aesthetically, the Orchid series harkens to abstract Color Field painting, mixed with the ritual elements of Ana Mendieta's landscape performances. In these experimental portraits, Morrocco wears a zentai suit, effectively embedding himself into color gradient fields of the photographs. Morrocco likens this bodily slip to the practice of minimalist painter Ellsworth Kelly, who was allowed to engage with concepts beyond his homosexuality, because his work did not directly implicate the body. Orchid seeks to locate a queer narrative apart from representing the carnal body—Morrocco seeks not to bury one's experience, but to expand the way one's experience can be expressed. "I think it's really important to stake a claim in the world of ideas with this work," Morrocco says of Orchid: Seasons. "Ellsworth Kelly represents that in many ways. By reflecting on his work, I'm making a point about how queer people are only given access to these realms if they cover their identities up, but we shouldn't have to do that. This work is really about breaking free and letting myself think about difficult contemporary concepts of economy, communication and history in public." culturedmag.com 167 Morrocco's Standing Among Berries, 2017, is part of Orchid: Seasons, a series that defies the body-over-mind paradigm for queer art.

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