Kiam Marcelo Junio, multimedia artist and photographer living in Chicago, IL








Reflection plays a key role for the works in this collection - both the intimate act of looking within one’s internalized history, and the physical act of seeing one’s presence on a mirrored surface. In this transmutation of lightwaves, how much is transferred? How much is lost?

PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS
Untitled (Therefore, I Am). Paper, 34x48 in. We grow, we learn, we change ourselves. But the conditions of our birth, our initiation into existence, are unequivocally documented. In this installation, I have made my birth certificate available for visitors to cut and do with as they choose.
Letters I’ll Never Send. Acrylic, 8x12 in. (5 pieces) This series of five letters, etched onto mirrored acrylic sheets, are addressed to pivotal figures in my life with whom I have no contact. The viewers see themselves reflected within the text, allowing identification and internal reflexion of the written content.
Threshold. Video installation This five-minute video installation is experienced by one viewer at a time. They sit at a desk, put on headphones, and through the ubiquitous apparatus of a smartphone, experience an intimate moment with me.

One Word. Acrylic, 8x10 in. (15 pieces) The words selected for this project-in-progress were solicited through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I collect a compendium of denigratory words that have personally affected individuals. Through the power of text in numbers, I hope to increase identification with others, and help in the battle to end bullying and hate.
A Feeling of Estrangement. Video projection (7 mins.) In this projected video performance, I recite a passage from Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in various personages that blur fiction and reality.
Faggot. Mixed media sculpture The commonly-used slur was once used to describe a bundle of sticks. By representing its etymological manifestation, I investigate the tensions and relationships between a word and its latent content.

I create work that investigates identity and its manifestations and permutations when presented in personal, interrelational, and larger social contexts. I am interested in the study of self in both Eastern and Western traditions. I approach this inquiry through materials in multiple media, ranging from photography to performance, video, sculpture, and site-specific installation.
My work explores the thresholds between personal and public, between nostalgia and obsession, between the addressor and the addressed. I make art that is inherently personal and revelatory, yet decisively interactive. By sharing my experiences and explorations, I intend to serve as a catalyst for others in their own self-inquiry. Doing so, I share in their journeys, and in the human condition as a whole.
QueerHot is a full service queer zine shop based out of San Francisco, California, featuring the following titles: Dirty Queer Magazine, Handbook, JIMMY, Pinups Magazine, Original Plumbing &STARRFUCKER.
We ship all over the world.
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Signor Jester | Preview
Photography - Winter Vandenbrink
Hair and Make Up - Bea Sweet
Model - Toby @ Select, Lauren @ Next
WANT those shoes on the right.
This is a wonderful project that some pretty fucking brilliant folk in our Chicago community have been working on. I think it is worthy of time and donations. Pass it along if you can!
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Thick Relations is a film about family. It is a film about the ties we create and the ways we keep them. With the rhythm and discordance of a life lived, Thick Relations explores the impossibly brief thrill of recognition and belonging; the devastating loss of the same.
Made through a process of intricate collaboration, Thick Relations is filled with immediate, proximal kinships and the inevitable absences—both brief and enduring—that occur within relationships. The central actors play characters based on themselves whom they crafted in collaboration with Rosskam. Moments of monologue, sex, and solitude punctuate the vibrant family life and as the film unfolds, we watch Veve, Jax, Ruby, and Emmit grapple with the loss of their dear friend. Their relationships contract and dissolve as they grieve and, in the end, find their way back to each other.
As members of marginalized communities, it is rare that we both get to appreciate art and be affirmed and excited by that process. While community integrity has been at the center of making Thick Relations, so has artistic integrity—and creating art that requires the participation of so many people with so many skills comes at a cost.
We invite you to join the community of queers and artists who have made this project come to life. Integral to the process of making this film has been the intention of allowing queer people to control our representations. From the first stages of dreaming and scriptwriting, to the development of characters, to all aspects of production, the process of making this film has been one with community and healing at its core. It is fitting, then, that we turn to you to support our post-production efforts.
Your contribution to this campaign will fund some of what remains to be done: editing, sound design and mix, publicity and festival entries. When we began working on the film, we had no idea that the actors were starting a queer choir in their actual, behind-the-scenes lives; by the time we finished the film, the choir had become a joyous, exciting part of the story. Your contribution will also allow us to purchase the rights to the songs the choir sings in the film.
Thick Relations is about connection, family, and love. Please connect with this project, please join this family, please share the love.Please visit our website and join our mailing list!
actual ndns v. hipsters
so maybe y’all can see how ridiculous you look.
How can someone call themselves “pro life” with a straight face when they’re actually not interested in protecting life at all, but rather punishing women who don’t embrace motherhood at every opportunity by either forcing them to be pregnant or end their pregnancies by hiring untrained charlatans to attack their ladyparts like a clogged rain gutter?
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Now that Governor Phil Bryant has signed a law requiring every abortion provider to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, the state’s only remaining abortion clinic’s existence will be threatened when the measure kicks in on July 1.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Reblog this shit. People should be really angry about this.
So I herd white peole are into appropriating scarification now
so i heard scarification is a way of SELF EXPRESSION and shouldn’t be misconstrued by people.
uhhh actually it’s a way for (at least in part of Africa where its practised) tribes to show which tribe they come from and its a ‘coming of age’ thing.
it’s not really the form of self expression you’re thinking about.
you’re placing white western’s definition of scarification on a practice that has nothing to do with the original practice of scarification.
looks like you’re the one misconstruing what scarification is about
I may be misconstruing it but I also have come to terms with other cultures mixing and muddling up appropriate rules and regulations.
I understand messing up age-old traditions is hurtful, especially if you are from the region. But that is no reason to fully attack another race for their ideals or the way they choose to change things around. If you do not agree with such ways of folks may it be white, latino, african american or what have you, I wouldn’t say turn a blind eye but just nod in their faces and reel in your own angst and hurt feelings in another way.
Racism and Spite isn’t the right way of showing what’s what.Wait, what? You think people coming into other cultural spaces and stealing their culture is okay? You’ve come to terms with people DESTROYING other cultures?
Okay, imagine that a bunch of people came into your house and took all your shit. They took all the paintings down from your walls, your jewelry, your pottery, your books, your precious family heirlooms. They start wearing your jewelry and decorating their house with your stuff, even the family heirlooms.
Naturally, you’re pissed, so you ask for your stuff back. They say no, because your stuff is omg so inspiring and creative and original and it really looks nice in their house and on their body and refuse to recognize that they are thieves and are basically shitting on your entire family by playing dress-up with your family heirlooms.
That’s basically an approximation of what is happening here.
this ^
people need tounderstand that appropriation is basically like someone coming into your house, wearing your stuff and walking around town with it. when you ask them to stop, they refuse to becuase ‘you inspire them’.
it doesnt matter how much someone likes your stuff, it’s still rude to wear it. get your own stuff to wear.
Selfportrait / Autoportrait
by Sylvain Norget
The Summer Diary Project. Follow us on Facebook + Twitter @summer_diary
Please watch this documentary!
Water is our most precious resource. A human being cannot survive more than 2 days without water. But who owns it? What is the price that we are paying for water, and how is it affecting communities around the world?
FLOW (COMPLETE - WIDESCREEN HIGH QUALITY) (by zombiehellmonkey)
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
How can someone call themselves “pro life” with a straight face when they’re actually not interested in protecting life at all, but rather punishing women who don’t embrace motherhood at every opportunity by either forcing them to be pregnant or end their pregnancies by hiring untrained charlatans to attack their ladyparts like a clogged rain gutter?
—-
Now that Governor Phil Bryant has signed a law requiring every abortion provider to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, the state’s only remaining abortion clinic’s existence will be threatened when the measure kicks in on July 1.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Reblog this shit. People should be really angry about this.
Guest book from my first solo exhibition a year ago (in Rota, Spain) (Taken with instagram)
George W. Bush: Now a convicted war criminal
In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were found guilty of war crimes on Friday.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.
The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
New postcards and business cards arrived in the mail today for iamKiam-photography.com and Flavors.me/KiamYoga (Taken with instagram)
A performance piece by my classmate Joe, who dove into Lake Michigan to look for his lost wallet. (Taken with instagram)
Coming home from “Shits N Giggles,” a queer dance party, with glitter all over my face. (Taken with instagram)
a piece from my body of work, At Your Service: “Yes, Sir.” mirrored acrylic. 2012. (Taken with instagram)
President Obama said Tuesday that the treatment of Asian Americans must go beyond treating them as the “model minority” to better understand the challenges faced by many groups, especially recent immigrants.
356/365 Chris, Emily, Thomás
May 29, 2011
Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid SX-70 Time Zero
355/365 The Night I Lost My iPhone
May 28, 2011
Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid SX-70 Time Zero
354/365 View from the Outhouse
May 27, 2011
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid SX-70 Time Zero
353/365 El Mural
May 26, 2011
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-70 Color Push
352/365 Bye Bye Bieber
May 25, 2011
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-70 Color Push
351/365
May 24, 2011
Sundown
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-70 Color Push
350/365
May 23, 2011
Making Shitmix
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-70 Color Push
349/365
May 22, 2011
Walking to Town
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-70 Color Push
348/365
May 21, 2011
Volunteers at Villas
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-70 Color Push
347/365 Morning at Mastatal
May 20, 2011
Mastatal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid 600
346/365 Chicharones, Mariscos, Hermana
May 19, 2011
Puriscal, Costa Rica
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid 600
344/365 Leaving Los Angeles
May 17, 2011
LAX, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid 600
343/365 The Fire Next Door
May 16, 2011
Anaheim, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid 600
342/365 The Human Hamster Ball
May 15, 2011
Orange, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid 600
341/365
May 14, 2011
Kelsey and Nataly
Corona, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid 600
340/365
May 13, 2011
Silver Bullet
Anaheim, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-680 Beta
339/365 A House Compressed
May 12, 2011
Anaheim, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-680 Beta
338/365 Goodbye, US Navy. Goodbye.
May 11, 2011
San Diego, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-680 Beta
337/365 North Park
May 10, 2011
San Diego, CA, USA
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Impossible PX-680 Beta