JORGE
ARIEL
ESCOBAR

F**k the Ones I Envy (2021) is collection of CMYK serigraphs that originated from thinking about the question of what is the queerness of immigration? When thinking about my own experience as an immigrant who moved to the United States at three years old, I often think about how I felt the need to present myself as “American as possible” in order to not be othered. Furthermore, as I began to hit my sexual discovery, I found myself attracted to this cookie-cutter “All-American boy” or “boy-next-door” aesthetic. It became this confusion of do I want to be with this type of man intimately or was I more so interested in being like them. This became the underlying conversation for me in this work as I chose to answer my own burning question by looking at how I developed an idealization of the “All-American, boy-next-door” male form and my desires of wanting this form whether it be sexually or aesthetically.

The imagery in this work consists of both found and original photographs with the original images primarily being self-portraiture. While the found images represent the unobtainable male image I could never. I chose to use the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key/black) serigraph process for this body of work intentionally removing the yellow layer which ultimately leaves the prints with a pink tone as opposed to the full CMYK color palate. Pink is being used here as a representation of queerness, the lack of masculinity and a visual representation of desires.