All In (Ace of Spades), 2021, Photograph

This series, All In, uses playing cards as a framework to reference chance, games, magic tricks, and tarot. While not on lockdown during the pandemic, my partner and I played a lot of cards and did a lot of protesting. My relationship to protest as a public demonstration comes through displays of “Pride”–specifically queer pride, and historically through images in circulation of demonstrations in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I intermixed these photographs (by photographer Fred McDarrah) with the comfort of domestic houseplants to create a utopic garden set on the Ace of Spades, also known as the “death card.”