The collages the New York-based artist showed at the New Museum’s Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon exhibition last fall stressed how, sometimes, the most romanticized visuals in queer culture can be the most damaging. These bittersweet images inspired some of Troy Michie’s first collages. Need proof? Pick up a vintage gay porn magazine and you’ll find fetishized images of nude black and brown men that simultaneously exalt their physical qualities and silence their identities.
