Boys Don’t Play With Barbies
18x24"
Charcoal
 
The boy emerges from charcoal as something unfinished and unstable, more apparition than body. Lines pile up, erase themselves, and reassert, as if the image is struggling to hold together under its own pressure. The face flickers between presence and disappearance, while the hands clutch inward, compressing the torso into a tight, defensive knot.
 
The subject appears marked by forces it did not choose—expectations, prohibitions, and corrections imposed from outside the frame.
 
He folds in on himself, shaped by rules about what he is allowed to be, touch, or desire. The violence here is quiet and cumulative, embedded in gesture and posture rather than action. What remains is a body learning how to disappear in order to survive.