Nicholas DuPont

Tread Lightly is a photography-based project using worn surfaces, collaged materials, and obscure depictions to create a space of queer reflection. I combine organic matter, human-made objects, and close-up self-portraits, creating tension in the images by exploring the relationship between materiality and the body. The photographs, collages, and photo transfers build regenerative spaces that offer new ways of seeing and understanding, whereby expressions of intimacy and tenderness take shape out of shadowy representations. Together the images evoke multiple themes, revealing queerness as multiple ways of being—rigidity and softness, evolution and disintegration, connection and disconnection. The images disorient the viewer while raising questions: What is alive? What is breathing? What is decaying? What is changing? Queerness here is not defined but offered as a fluid identity encompassing sexual freedom, transformation, and expansive ways of becoming.