GLR May-June 2026

The Sculpted Word

A MERICAN ARTIST Nayland Blake’s book My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio is anan thology covering 41 years of practice that functions as a manifesto, with numerous statements of artistic and cultural principles. Blake is a professor of studio arts at Bard College and includes a chapter that’s a step-by-step, 100-assignment cur riculum. Blake, who uses they/them pro

evoke queer-coded rebellion by artists such as Romaine Brooks, Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Robert Map plethorpe, Lee Miller, James Van Der Zee, and Andy Warhol. Even during prepubescence, Blake was queer. “My friends and I were art nerds, and the way we expressed our nerdiness was through a really obsessive involvement with obscure culture.” They are aware that

S TEVEN F. D ANSKY

MY STUDIO IS A DUNGEON IS THE STUDIO Wri ti ngs and Interviews, 1983–2024 by Nayland Blake Duke Univ. Press. 368 pages, $28.95

queer identity and culture are marginalized and must be navi gated through a risky existence. “Queer people are the only mi nority whose culture is not transmitted within the family. Indeed, the assertion of one’s queer identity often is made as a form of contradiction to familial identity.” In photo albums of early family life, narratives of childhood queerness are nonex istent, and Blake advocates reinterpreting hetero-dominant fa milial narratives. “Denied images of themselves, they have changed the captions on others, family photos.” Blake declares:

nouns, employs creative strategies to push boundaries, question identities, challenge the art world, and confront society itself. They are a multi-hyphenate—a borderline hoarder, conceptual ist, cultural critic, performance and video artist, sadist, sculp tor, semiotician, and self-described gender-gaseous, multiracial homo egghead. Lesbian surrealist artist Claude Cahun wrote in Confidences aumiroir : “My role was to embody my own revolt and to ac cept, at the proper moment, my destiny, whatever it may be.”

“Queer is a verb.” Queer people can redefine themselves, constructing non normative narratives that can disrupt linear familial timelines. Blake considers Marcel Duchamp, the Daddy of Dada, to have “a gay sensibility within modernism” for re jecting societal norms and conven tions, exploring gender ambiguity and fluidity, and creating non-normative personas. A core principle of Dadaism is “to provoke, perturb, bewilder, tease, tickle to death, confuse.” In “Starting Over,” a 23-minute video performance, they wear an oversized white bunny suit filled with 140 pounds of navy beans, making move ment impossible without assistance. The caricature of the rabbit is part of their ongoing meditation on Bugs Bunny, and they ironically write: “gay men are associated with having a lot of sex, with being promiscuous [and] fucking like bunnies.” Crossing Object (Inside Gnomen) is

Blake’s work, especially in perform ance art, embodies confrontation, in teraction, and provocation. They investigate queer erotics at gallery and museum installations through highly subjective fetishistic performances, expressing personal experiences, fan tasies, and memories, wearing elabo rate costumes to adopt surrogate alter-ego “fursonas” as a member of the “furry” subculture. They identify as a sculptor, focusing on transform ing objects and exploring ideas through physical embodiment. They write: “I call myself a performance artist because I am one of those phys ical objects in the world, and I explore my ideas through the ways that I per form embodiment.” Blake suggests that the alienation of the self can be partly resolved through physical metamorphoses. The book cover portrait affirms this idea with their beard, a seven-year growth braided into a sculpture, a pink tail

Nayland Blake with Crossing Object (Inside Gnomen), 2017. At the ICA LA. Mel Melcon photo, LATimes .

their fantastical anthropomorphic fursona—half bear, half bison, incorporating a life-size “Gnomen” suit. They encourage mu seum visitors to take selfies, cuddle, or add ribbons and bows to the costume. “Gnomen allows me to inhabit possibilities that are difficult for me: they are shorter than me, for example, and fatter. Their genitals can change; they can be turned into a stuffed animal or a rubber flotation device. Gnomen is the cos tume, but more of a body that I can feel is coextensive with my own.” In Correction , Blake uses face-slapping impact play on a set of video screens. They are seated bare-chested when some

sticking out from their rear, and various BDSM symbols, such as paint-splattered engineer boots, a sleeveless bar vest, and a modified Muir cap. Blake often uses their body, actions, and presence as the primary material in their performances. Blake’s alter egos include Princess CoCo, Pink Bunny, and Gnomen. Physical transformation through playful experimentation cre ates alter egos, drag personas, and fursonas. These are used to Steven F. Dansky’s collected writings from 1971–2026 will be pub lished later this year in the book From Trauma to Activism. 40

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