Austin Hardwick

My body of work relates to parenthood, family intimacy, growing up, and queerness. I am influenced by LaToya Ruby Frazier, Elinor Carucci, and Mengwen Cao. In my family, we aren’t really emotionally vulnerable with each other or expressive of our love for each other, whether verbally or physically. This has led to me being uncomfortable with expressing affection and a sense of emotional distance between me and my parents. I also wanted to acknowledge that our parents are human and don’t really know any more than we do. While my parents made mistakes,  I know they love me and want what’s best for me. At the same time, all the choices they made in parenting me, whether consciously or not, have impacted who I am today. As the oldest child in my family, I am also interested in the relationship between mothers and their eldest daughters. Finally, my work relates to queerness because although I am openly queer among my peers, I am still not out to my parents. Thus, this is a part of my identity that is important to me, but I feel like I have to suppress it when I’m with my family. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I was raised by openly queer parents or at least openly affirming parents and if that would lead to greater feelings of connectedness between us.