Decorative Sunday
Kyle Meyer (b. 1985), a New York-based photographer and fiber artist with an MFA from the Parsons School of Design, has worked with the marginalized gay community in Eswatini since 2009, where homosexuality is illegal. The photographic essay Interwoven is his debut monograph exploring the challenges faced by gay men in this hyper-masculine culture. Edited by Santa Fe art historian Chelsea Weathers with an interview of Meyer by art history professor Andy Campbell, Interwoven was published in Santa Fe by Radius Books and New York by Yossi Milo in 2020.
These portraits fuse digital and Polaroid photography with traditional Swazi fibers, giving voice to silenced members of the LGBTQ community. Tension between the necessity of the individuals to hide their queerness and their desire to express themselves openly inform both the subject and the means of fabricating the work. Each piece from the Interwoven series is labor-intensive, taking days or sometimes weeks to complete. Meyer often photographs his subjects wearing a traditional headwrap made from a vibrantly colored textile typically associated with women. He then produces a print of the portrait and shreds it, together with the fabric from the headwrap, weaving the strips into patterned three-dimensional works. The final portrait presents each person's individuality while using the fabric as a screen to protect their identity. Meyer writes:
It would be taboo for men to wear these head-wraps in public, as that would indicate homosexual tendencies. . . . Each man’s gaze is directly on the viewer as if demanding attention to their true identity while still being hidden behind the fabric, which is a metaphor for their culture suppression. This masked, submissive state is typical in their everyday lives. Through this series, I aim to channel a voice for these silenced men and embracing an otherwise frowned-upon identity with a sense of pride without neglecting the reality of their every-day existence.
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