JAIME KNIGHT
An Impossible Pursuit, graphite on paper, 24" x 24" each (triptych), 2011

Jaime Knight is an Iowa City-based artist.

My current work is an investigation of the discursive practices that have effected the creation of a queer subjectivity. Through an exploration of the historical, cultural, psychological, and sexual I am trying to re-imagine what it means to relate in the world as a gay subject. It is an attempt to create an autonomous space of dissent, one where, "the undecidability of the aesthetic experience implies a questioning of how the world is organised, and therefore the possibility of changing or redistributing that same world [sic]."1

The quote implies a politicized moment, one of subjectivation rather than subjection, where the artwork, both in its creation and its comprehension by a viewer, becomes a catalyst for new and novel ways of thinking.2 While not being overtly political, there is a political aspect to the work and while I am not proselytizing to particular ends, I imagine it to be active in that it challenges the viewer to make connections, participate and formulate for themselves the narratives implied in the work.

The work is not simply intended for a queer audience, though the myriad references might be lost on one who is unfamiliar with the history of homosexuality. Instead, there is an attempt to create an experience where the affective response allows the viewer to enter the work and respond on an emotional level regardless of prior knowledge. This is achieved with the hand of a careful craftsman striving to imbue the work with an aura of the alchemical and through providing access to universal signs and significations which give clues to the multilayered content.
- Jaime Knight 2012

1 Bishop, Claire 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso.

2 See Foucault, who argues that subjects are constructed through pre-determining modes of socialization and knowledge that all members of society are subject to and that by striving to uncover and understand these socializing modes we can overcome and/or dismantle them.