Wayne Bund

My visual practice explores the intersection of fantasy, documentation, and transformation. My photos celebrates queer and feminist identities through photography and performance, using abstraction, costuming, and mythology to craft narratives that exist outside normative structures. Central to my artistic philosophy is the idea of creating spaces where diverse stories can be told and celebrated, allowing the body to express agency. 

My “Camouflage” series depicts queer survival through abstraction and erasure. These self portraits express agency by obscuring and hiding my body in the frame. Mythology, the landscape, and costuming are tools I use to transform my 43-year-old gay male body into monsters and abstract sculptures. Growing up, I found myself attracted to images of monsters with hair and horns and accentuated features of masculinity. I read lots of greek mythology. I found myself very intrigued by the creatures in Where The Wild Things Are, and Michael Jackson’s transformation in the “Thriller” music video. As I came out of the closet at 18, I started to realize these interests were connected to my sexuality. I have worked as a kindergarten teacher for the past 20 years, which means revealing my full queer interests in public could jeopardize my job. The act of transformation in my self-portraits becomes a process of reclaiming power, that in hiding my identity and transferring myself into beasts and mythological characters, I find power in showcasing my own desires. 

This body of work was created while in residency at Playa Summer Lake in Summer 2024. As someone born in the Portland area, and raised in a temperate rainforest along the banks of the Sandy River in Boring, Oregon, the quiet desolation of the high desert asks me to redefine who I am and what I consider important. These portraits represent me entering into conversation into deeper parts of myself.