Sexual Deviations by Lisa Kokin

Lisa Kokin: “’Sexual Deviations’ narrates the story of the artist’s first glimmers of same-sex attraction. Using a vintage album cover as the container paired with images from a 1960s women’s magazine, scientific illustrations and other vintage ephemera. The text is rubber-stamped and has the characteristic Kokin wry sense of humor, along with subversion and reinterpretation of the gendered imagery of decades ago.”

“Sexual Deviations” opens with an image of what the majority might think of as an all-American heterosexual woman. Underneath though is a statement that opens up an entirely different view - “You might not guess that I’m queer.”
“Breathing New Life into Old Photos” interview: “For me, art is a way to record my thoughts and feelings… My art expresses a lot about my interest in the human condition: social injustice, the finite nature of life, empathy with the underdog, a love for old and beat-up objects, and a humorous view of the world and all its absurdities. Take the found photos that surface regularly in my work, for example. Sometimes there are inscriptions on the back (‘Susie, 7 years old’), but more often they come to me stripped of all identity. I sit in my studio and speculate about these peoples’ lives.
“I will, of course, never know the truth, so I feel it is my job to give them a new life so that they won’t be forgotten. Naturally, these works are ultimately more about me than the hundreds of anonymous individuals appearing in them.
“ [My work is] one giant and varied visual autobiography”.