In their degree of conformity with rules
377 images printed on paper
4 x 4 in each (10.14 x 10.14 cm)
2014

A wall of 377 (a number associated with the Indian Penal Code that criminalizes sexual acts ‘against the order of nature’) photographs (collected from gay dating websites) inspired by text from Michel Foucault’s seminal ‘The History of Sexuality’ where he writes
‘The interiority of Christian morality is often contrasted with the exteriority of a pagan morality that would consider acts only in their concrete realization, in their visible and manifest form, in their degree of conformity with rules, and in the light of opinion or with a view to the memory they leave behind them.’
-Chapter 3 / Enkrateia
In a heteronormative grid of man and woman coming together to create a child, a process that continues ad infinitum, homosexuality creates a so-called glitch in the system. Here, the glitch translates into the process of creating the final images by manipulating bit-rate. This becomes the source of the freeze frames that comprise the final piece. Distorted images reflect the manipulated anonymity of such self-representation while forming a system of their own. The error (seen here in the lines running midway through the pictures) also works as a sort of self-cancellation and erasure; details of faces get blurred out and censorship takes over.