Jesse Egner
Disidentifications
26 May - 1 June 2020


This series explores queer disidentification. How LGBTQ+ individuals in different communities and social environments construct, engage in, and practice their own disidentities not bound by any existing structure.

As a fat gay man with invisible disability, I have experienced rejection from members of my fellow gay community, forcing me into a difficult relationship with my identity. Queer disidentities exist in a state of dynamism, always with the potential of change but can also exist in a state of stability. To “queer” your identity is not to create a counter identity, rather, it is to disidentify entirely and remove yourself from any existing framework. The uncanny and playful performative acts in these photographs represent the precarious nature of queer identity and the vast potential it has to form, transform, and reform.

This series explores disidentification, self-representation, and the fluidity of becoming, as well as call attention to the struggles from which disidentification is manifested - The gaze, the oppression, the self-doubt, and the self-destruction.

-Jesse Egner

Jesse Egner (b. 1993, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, US) is an artist and photographer now based in Brooklyn, New York.

Often taking the form of playful portraiture of himself and other individuals, his work explores themes of queerness, disidentifications, queer corporeality, and the uncanny. His work has recently been included in exhibitions at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland; Photographic Center Nothwest in Seattle, Washington; El Rincón Social and Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, Texas; Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois; and the Pingyao International Photography Festival in Pingyao, China. He holds a BA from Millersville University of Pennsylvania and is currently an MFA Photography candidate at Parsons School of Design in New York City.